Mail Server Connect Fail

[pweb]

Cannot get connection to mail server(s) to enable e-mail alerts.

* admin->Mail Settings
* Input smtp settings
* "test settings" (button)

Error spawned: 220 mailpod.hostingplatform.com ESMTP

Have tried different mail servers for different accounts with all permutations of smtp settings.

Any suggestions?

TIA

[jdalrymple]

Start by nmapping the server:

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[root@localhost ~]# nmap -p 25 smtp.gmail.com

Starting Nmap 5.51 ( http://nmap.org ) at 2015-05-12 14:36 CDT
Nmap scan report for smtp.gmail.com (74.125.193.108)
Host is up (0.0070s latency).
Other addresses for smtp.gmail.com (not scanned): 74.125.193.109
rDNS record for 74.125.193.108: ig-in-f108.1e100.net
PORT   STATE SERVICE
25/tcp open  smtp

Nmap done: 1 IP address (1 host up) scanned in 0.13 seconds

Of course use your mail server, not Google's.

[pweb]

Thanks for the response.

I'm doing an eval to see whether Log Server will work for us and just loaded the .ova package.

It doesn't appear to have nmap present.

Thanks anyway.

[jolson]

Any chance you could install nmap?

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yum install nmap

[pweb]

Thanks for the reply.

I suspect the problem is elsewhere.

I have tried specification of the smtp server by IP address in lieu of FQDN and receive the same error.

Have also tried other security parameters and mail ports other than 25 with no success.

Any other ideas?

TIA

[jdalrymple]

I have tried specification of the smtp server by IP address in lieu of FQDN and receive the same error.

Have also tried other security parameters and mail ports other than 25 with no success.

These steps will not resolve a situation where your firewall is preventing access to an SMTP port, which is a very common security practice in both internal and external networks to prevent spamming and virus/malware spread. Please install nmap using the command jolson provided then run it against your smtp server as I indicated. This is truly what needs to be done to troubleshoot your problem.

[pweb]

nmap installed as instructed.

server specified as instructed ... scan performed with results: 587/tcp open submission.

"Test button" spawns: 220 mailpod.hostingplatform.com ESMTP

Don't know whether this is significant but:

* Log server installed in VirtualBox
* VirtualBox installed on my Win 7 workstation
* Workstation also hosts my mail clients, which work o.k.
* Syslogs received ok in Log Server, and queries seem to function fine.

Any further ideas?

[jdalrymple]

A bit silly on my part - I apologize. If you were getting a 220 error it is not a network issue. Sorry for my haste. That said is this an Exchange server? We've had some interesting problems with Exchange, some resolved, some as of yet unresolved. The easy solution is to have your Exchange admins allow you to relay through port 25 from this box, but this is often not an option. If this isn't Exchange what type of box is it?

[pweb]

Two separate mail servers tried, neither of which is Exchange.

* Cloud server serviced by NetworkSolutions
* Self-owned BlueOnyx (linux) server at one of our branches

[jolson]

Let's try testing your smtp server:
yum install telnet
telnet smtp.test.server 587
At this point you should connect to the smtp server. Can you issue any commands to it? Try the following, one line at a time. Report the output from your smtp server here.

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HELO
mail from:<[email protected]>
rcpt to:<[email protected]>
data
From: <[email protected]>
Subject: test mail

this is a test
.

The above may not work exactly as described, as I don't know the nature of your SMTP server. The output should be useful enough though.