Tell me more ×
Server Fault is a question and answer site for professional system and network administrators. It's 100% free, no registration required.
up vote 0 down vote favorite

I have been trying to setup a mail server in ubuntu using this tutorial: http://flurdy.com/docs/postfix/index.html

I have completed the basic configurations (I havent reached the extend part yet)

So, I have used telnet and the following works:

  • send email to gmail

  • send mail to itself

  • forward the mail it receives (I have forwarded the mail I receive to an external account for testing purposes, so the above step forwards the email to another gmail account)

So my problem is I cannot send mail from gmail, I get '530 530 5.7.1 Invalid Address'.

All of what I have tried is:

  • I have tried pinging my mail server from another pc on the same network, cant find the server.

  • I disabled the router's firewall, forwarded the port and set up my mail server as an exposed host.

  • Disabled shorewall on my mail server.

  • Changed the shorewall policies to allow everything in.

At each of the above steps I tried sending an email from gmail to my mail server and I still get the same error.

I am really not sure what is happening, and am clueless of what to do. Any help is greatly appreciated. Thank you in advance.

share|improve this question

4 Answers

up vote 0 down vote accepted

I just browsed through the link you gave and your question also mentions that - "I have tried pinging my mail server from another pc on the same network, cant find the server."

So it must be a DNS problem. On command line type 

nslookup <your mail server fully qualified domain name>

like 

nslookup mail.yahoo.com

If you get proper IP address of server then try using

dig -t mx <mail domain name>

like 

dig -t mx yahoo.com

If you see IPs in both nslookup and dig then fine, else it is confirmed DNS problem.

share|improve this answer
Thank you also for kind of pointing me in the right direction. I had problems with the fqdn as well as the MX/SPF records. I am able to find the server now, however now the emails are bouncing back saying: Connection timed out. – user13601 Aug 5 '09 at 15:19
up vote 0 down vote

Look in /var/log/mail.log to see exactly what the mail server is doing; paste the relevant entries in your question if they don't make sense to you. Also, copies of your config files would probably help.

share|improve this answer
which config files do you need me to post?they are the same as the ones on the link (tutorial) posted above – user13601 Aug 5 '09 at 15:20
up vote 0 down vote

Is your fqdn well configured? Do you have a reverse host configured?

share|improve this answer
Thank you for kind of pointing me in the right direction. I had problems with the fqdn as well as the MX/SPF records – user13601 Aug 5 '09 at 14:56
up vote 0 down vote

Why cant you try out this :-http://jitamitra.blogspot.com/2009/03/configure-postfix-postfixadmin-dovecot.html

I found this is very easy way of configuration,Once you done you can customize it as you need, Just have look at this.

share|improve this answer

Your Answer

 
discard

By posting your answer, you agree to the privacy policy and terms of service.