Re: [cobalt-users] network cannot find my server

[Larry Smith <lesmith@xxxxxxxxx>]

On Wednesday 05 November 2003 07:53, Jale wrote:
> >There is a company for whom I do some work every so often. However in the
> >past 2 weeks this organisation has not been able to reach any of  the
> >websites that are hosted on my server. They receive a page which states:
>
> I have almost the same situation - one customer - if I send mail to their
> domain it can take 3 days to get there, and sometimes it is just returned
> undeliverable; mail from them to me has the same problem. But, I can access
> their website, they cannot access mine, they cannot ftp to it, etc.
>
> Tracert and ping looks almost great, the oddity is that tracert gets lines
> like:
> 7ms     *       7ms
> so we get 2 very fast times with a timeout in the middle.
>
> No one else has this problem with our server. I'm wondering if their ISP
> has us blacklisted or something. The Palm Beach Library system had us
> blacklisted as hosting porn because one site had a picture of topless girl
> taken at a huge *public* art expo (Burning Man).
>
> Regards,
> JALE
>

Jale, et al... (both of you)

First step, find out who/what their mail host is 
## host -t mx <domain.com>
should come back with a few lines that tell what machine is the correct mail 
host for that domain (replace domain.com with correct name).

Second, try to telnet on port 25 to _that_ host name (the one with the lowest 
number if several are given) and see what it says.  If you get "connection 
refused" you are probably being blocked.  If you get "timeout" then their 
server is having a problem (number of connections; too many processes, etc)

If the connection is successful, then enter the following:

helo <domain> (your domain name)
mail from: <your email address>
rcpt to: <a mail address on their system>

and see what it says for each.  If you get an "ok" on each, then just enter 
"quit" to exit out of sendmail.  It works (or should)....

-- 
Larry Smith
SysAd ECSIS.NET
sysad@xxxxxxxxx