How do I get rid of localhost from email header?

Question

I think it may be triggering spam filters. The header looks as follows:

Received: from wordswithfriends.net (localhost.localdomain [127.0.0.1])

How can I get rid of localhost.localdomain? I'm running Centos

/etc/hosts:

127.0.0.1 localhost.localdomain localhost
# Auto-generated hostname. Please do not remove this comment.
50.22.72.198    wor.wordswithfriends.net        wor

Answer 1

I doubt this is triggering spam filters. Its hard to say without more headers, but this is common for an application running on the same machine as the smtp server. The app is submitting the message through localhost.

But you can check /etc/hosts to ensure your host name is setup correctly. As well you can check your smtp server to ensure its using the proper host name.

Answer 2

/etc/hosts

insert between 127.0.0.1 and other entries, the FQDN you want, aka wordswithfriends.net

The mail server picks up the first entry for 127.0.0.1 ( since that is the connection used ) that has a . in it, aka FQDN.

So if you have

127.0.0.1 wordswithfriends.net servername localhost localhost.localdomain

You will show. Received: from wordswithfriends.net (wordswithfriends.net [127.0.0.1])

But as Steven said, I also doubt it is triggering spam filters.

Answer 3

Try the command hostname -f to see what your fully qualified name is. If you don't have a static address with the appropriate DNS entries use your ISP's relay to send email.

If you are sending email as localhost or localhost.localdomain, it will run into problems with spam filters. Your mail server must use its FQDN (fully qualified domain name) to send to the Internet (not required for your ISP's relay server).

Try sending email to an external email account you have access to and check the headers there. It is common to see email sent to the mail server from localhost or localhost.localdomain. The mail server must then use its name to forward the email.

Normally, your email server should known its FQDN so you should get received lines like:

Received: from localhost.localdomain ([127.0.0.1])
          (envelope-sender <somebody@example.com>)
          by mail.example.com (qmail-ldap-1.03) with SMTP
          for <recipent@example.net>; 29 Nov 2010 00:11:37 -0000
Received: from mail.example.com ([192.0.2.15])
          (envelope-sender <somebody@example.com>)
          by mx.example.net with ESMTP
          for <recipent@example.net>; 29 Nov 2010 00:11:39 -0000