Hi I was hoping someone could help me sent up a Postfix email server on Opensuse 10.3. I have been trying to send emails (receiving emails is fine), but they just stay in the queue. I looked at /var/log/mail and found this error:
status=deferred (lost connection with “receving server” while performing the HELO handshake)
Does anyone know what that means? The server was working fine a few days ago. Please let me know if you can help, thanks.
Are you on a dynamic IP address provided by your ISP? Lots of recipients refuse to accept direct connections from dynamic addresses because they are usually home PCs infected wiht spambots. The dynamic address range your connection is in could have been blacklisted recently. The right way to do it is to relay through your ISP’s SMTP server.
On 01/19/2009 wraith 86 wrote:
> lost connection with “receving server” while performing the HELO
> handshake
Wild guess: Your IP is blacklisted.
Other than that, you should really give us more information: Does it happen for all sending attempts toall domains? Post more logfile content, please.
Uwe
It’s only when I am attempting to send emails to one specific server, other servers like Gmail and Hotmail receive the emails fine. That was the only piece of information I could find concerning the problem. I went through all the mail logs in /var/log/mail and that was the only error msg I could find. I did notice that when I did send emails to Gmail and Hotmail they ended up in the spam folder. Not sure if that helps.
Also it’s a static IP connection through my router
If you have a non-business broadband connection, even a static IP address could be in the blacklisted range.
Don’t overlook the possibility that the receiver is down or having problems, either (especially if it’s a small ISP or a private server). Have you contacted them?
When my Scalix server gets really busy – typically on a Monday morning when everyone wants to check the mail at the same time 
– it will time out, break connections, or even outright refuse them.
on the postfix box, try sending a mail to that domain via telnet. You should see errors.
http://evolvedcode.net/content/doc_alttelnet/index_p5.asp
Uwe
When I tried to send an email through telnet I received this error: 550 RBL rejection: http://www.spamhaus.org/query/bl?ip=###.###.##.## (My routers IP). Could this be because my MX record in my DNS is setup incorrectly?
No, they just don’t like your IP address for the reasons already mentioned.
That is pretty strange, because last week it was working fine. If they had blacklisted my IP address I thought that I wouldn’t be able to telnet to the server either?
Sure you can. A refusal to accept mail is just as visible in telnet as in postfix logs. There’s no attempt to hide the refusal.
So I guess the best method is to contact the provider then. Thanks a lot for your help. I only use it to have error and lfd messages on our server forwarded to my email account, which is the server where my IP is blacklisted. Heres hoping I can get it sorted out quickly
Or just use your provider’s SMTP relay.
Thanks for all your help. Our external IP address had been marked as spam due to the fact that our MX record was incorrect. Thats all been fixed and it’s now working. Thanks again guys.