Can't Retrieve Internet Email

[matica]

Hello
I'm trying to fix a problem with my exchange server. Im using Exchange 5.5 with Outlook 2000 clients. Each client has an external internet mail site set up.
The problem I'm running into: One computer(my computer) will retrieve the mail from the internet site with no problems, but the others can't. When the users click the "Send and Receive" button, the "Delivering Messages" dialog box pops up like everything was fine. No errors occur, but no mail is retrieved.
My ISP setup a pop account with a wild card so any username can come in. But my exchange server won't route the mail to the user on the LAN( my computer gets all the mail.) when I send mail from my intranet to one of the user on it works good.

Does anyone have any idea what the problem(s) could be???

 

[Hungster]

i think you need to provide more detail how the whole thing setup, i am not so clear how exactly you are trying to do

if you have your own exchange server, must you have your own domain, then why is your isp doing the wild card ?

Hung

 

[matica]

Thanks for the reply Hungster (IS/IT--Manageme)

well yeah, my ISP delegates a sub-domain from( company.com to test.company.com ) One user in the account. The mail for test.company.com is delivered throughout a linux box mailserver IP 245.459.123.22( Cobalt raq4 ) with a wild card (*) setup on the alias of the user *@test.company.com. Because of the * any names are granted to come in. The same mailserver has a mx record to a remote location. For Example;
mail.test.company.com 208.111.68.121 This part of the configuration works good.

ON THE REMOTE LOCATION.
The task plan is to setup just a exchange server5.5 on the intranet to route the incoming mail to the users mailbox on the Intranet using outlook 2000 working under the domain of test.company.com.

Well, the internal mail works good between users. When I send mail from the internet to user1@test.company.com the mail comes in fine but the problem is that user1 is getting all the internet mail for all the users.(user2,user3,user4,etc.

Can you help me........

 

[Hungster]

i am no expert but i found this topic a bit interesting

i assume you had setup recipients for all the users, e-mail account right ?

Hung

 

[matica]

yes, for the NT domain.....


the setup in the romote location consist of one win2000 server as the primary controller, one NT4.0 server running exchange5.5 and 10 win9x system.

WAN is provided by a DSL connection.

 

[matica]

yes I add the user from the NT domain....

I setup a MX record on the primary controller that point to the exchange server. You know if I need to make a record on the DNS for each mailbox....?

 

[Hungster]

i left the mx record to my isp to point to my static ip and then map my external ip to my internal ip and ports

can you send an e-mail to my e-mail
hung999@yahoo.com

Hung

 

[matica]

How can I do that......? Sorry but I know some but not as much.

Yeah my mail is going out fine, the problem is that when the incoming mail reach the exchange server is not routing the incoming mail to the proper mailboxes.

Crazy....... I think I need to walk away from this computer and get my head clear. Im not getting anywhere.

New ideas will come in

Thank you very much for taking the time to help me and if you think of something well you know where to found me.

Thanks again

 

[ChrisHirst]

Matica
You obviously like to make life difficult for yourself

1/ Exchange 5.5 will NOT collect mail from a POP3 mailbox. 5.5 uses SMTP with ETRN only

All that is happening is the first client to logon to a POP3 mailbox and request a transfer gets everything

For now forget MX records etc as your ISP should be handling mail transfers. Get Exchange working using the ISP as an intermediary before trying to go live with a mail server

If you can get a SMTP 'catchall' mailbox at the ISP then Ok failing that you can use a POP3 downloader to pick up the mail then pass it to Exchange. I used POPWeasel where I needed this type of setup. (

http://www.mailgate.com)

Chris

 

[matica]

Im not trying to go live with this exchange server. My ISP has only one pop setup for me and I have multiple users on the other end. The idea is to have exchange get the mail from my ISP which it does and routed to the different mailboxes on the intranet.

So the problem is not that the server is not going online or that the server is not sending or receiving mail, The problem is that the exchange server is not routing the mail to the correct mailboxes.

I know this can be done without any third party software.

Im trying to utilize what I have here without going the easy route and purchasing a software to do this.....

Sorry Chris Im not trying to be rude, I just want to get this done.

Thanks for your input anyways.

Matica

 

[ChrisHirst]

As I said Exchange cannot pick up mail from a POP3 mailbox the commands required to initiate a mail transfer and sorting are different so until you have a SMTP mailbox it will not work correctly. During a POP transfer only the domain part of the mail header is used for addressing to the mailbox hence user1@domain.com will end up in the same mailbox as user999@domain.com. When SMTP is used for addressing the 'x-apparentlyto' portion of the header is decoded to use as the mailbox address this portion of the address is then passed to the Exchange MTA to be decoded into an X400 address to allow the message to be placed into the correct mailbox.
The comment regarding being live to the internet was made because if you have MX records pointing to your IP any SMTP mail servers that transfer mail for your domain obviously use the MX record to locate that domain and as you have a DSL connection both your server and the ISP server will have MX records for the same domain name pointing to 2 different servers

Chris

 

[matica]

Ok Chris.... I understand.

My ISP provide me with a pop.domain.com and a smtp.domain.com for my sub-domain. So I have a SMTP as well.

And I have exchange working properly internaly to all the users and recived mail from the internet to user1.

The I need to configure exchange for the smtp, and if the answer is yes where....?

I never done this so, I am lost in this jungle.

Thanks Chris again

Matica

 

[matica]

Chris,

You wrote: . When SMTP is used for addressing the 'x-apparentlyto' portion of the header is decoded to use as the mailbox address this portion of the address is then passed to the Exchange MTA to be decoded into an X400 address to allow the message to be placed into the correct mailbox.

On the exchange server the queues is setup to privite information store, but I have two other options there
1. Internet mail services
2. Public store.

Should I setup the MTA queues to Internet mail services.

ohhh man I am very confused.....

Please help me.........

Matica

 

[matica]

Cna anyone help me configure my exchange server....?

MTA
postoffice
msmail

 

[ChrisHirst]

Sorry for the delay couple of days on a clients site.
Couple of things before starting on the setup. Have you verified that all your users have their SMTP address set to suit your domain name (check this on the e-mail tab from mailbox properties) If they are not, do not start to change them individually [there lies the road to madness].
Also check that the site addressing is correct Organisation|configuration|Site Addressing then the addressing tab (think thats the right order (not at work yet)). There are 4 addresses MS Mail, cc:Mail, SMTP, X400 if you are not using MS Mail or cc:Mail Uncheck these then Highlight the SMTP entry and click edit, If this address does not match to your domain space addresses eg @yourdomain.com edit it to suit and Ok it, This will be used to build the mailbox SMTP address. The X400 address is slightly more complex, when you edit this you get a bigger dialog box. If you only have a single Exchange site a lot of the fields are redundant, You only really need to have Organisation, Organisational Unit & Administrative Unit filled in (if I have missed anything I will post from work). This addressing is used for internal transfers so if you have more than one Exchange server (Perish the thought, one is more than enough) you will need to add an entry for ou1 (BTW this is the way I set up X400 may not be the MS way for all you pedants out there). When you are happy with the settings Ok it and Ok the addressing dialog you will get messages about you changing the addresses and would you like to change all the addresses to suit the new configuration (can't remember exact wording) answer yes to this and you will get a message about a process being put in place to change etc Ok these and leave it to get on with it, The operation may take a few seconds or a few minutes depends on your server config. This may actually be the only thing missing from your setup, What I will do today while I am actually setting up a replacement for one of my servers is to note down all the settings you need to check\alter and post it up later today (wednesday 16th) or tomorrow, If I try to go through it from memory I will miss something and I am not quite sad enough to have an Exchange server at home, Just the 100M Win2k network (with AD) Hey! Its a playground

Chris

 

[DomainMaster]

try setting up a seperate SMTP server to collect all the mail from the ISP, then forward it on to the exchange server. set the exchange server to send all mail on to the SMTP server, then on to the ISP.

I use OmniQuad MailWall [omniquad.com] to do thi. it's easy to setup and configure, has lot's of extra features and works a dream

hope this helps.
Jon.
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To be is to do (Sartre)
To do is to be (Casmus)
Do be do be do (Sinatra)
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[CaffieneNnicotine]

Man I think this is getting way too complex. I think ChrisHirst is right. Being the ISP has set up a wildcard for your smtp address, there is no way to distinguish what mail belongs to what user. The isp HAS to set up seperate SMTP addresses for each user. If I were you, this is what I would do. Get rid of your ISP's mail. You have an Exchange server, you have a relatively fast connection to the net. Just have your ISP transfer your domain registration to your static IP and have them set the MX records to point to your IP. Then load Internet Mail connector on the Exchange server and let it rip. I think this is by far the easiest method to solve your problem. I have a site with 55 nodes all going through a 128K ISDN pipe and it works super damn duper. Mail takes up very little bandwidth do to its inconsitent nature. All Complaints Will Be Routed To /dev/null

 

[matica]

Thank you all of you for the help( Chris, Jon and CaffieneNnicotine. I walk away for couple hours to get my head clear. I will try this configurations and I will let you all know how I make out.......

Thanks again,

Matica

 

[ChrisHirst]

In response to CaffieneNnicotine. The general ides is for the ISP's to set up a 'catchall' mailbox this can be either SMTP or POP3 or both, It is usually the 'personal' ISPs who would set up one mailbox per user. The main differences between the two protocols is that SMTP is a push transfer where the host initiates TX and POP3 is a pull transfer where the client connects and initiates the TX (hence the send\receive button on Outlook express). This is why SMTP is used to transfer mail between hosts over the Internet, Imagine the extra traffic if every mail server in the world had to go and ask every other mail server if there was any messages. Draw the analogy of the post office you get everyones mail in the house\office delivered to your mailbox by the postman(SMTP). Then the first one up in your house\office sorts out the indivdual messages(MTA). As you can see the sorting issue is handled by a separate agent in exchange, it is this point that the addressing is now handled with the bit before the @ (SMTP uses the bit after).
X400 addressing only really comes into play with intersite (Exchange) transfers. You are absolutely correct about the simplest way is to have the Exchange IMC 'live' to the Internet so long as is configured correctly and you have taken the precautions against relaying, The other thing of course is to have a 'always on' connection to the Internet of at least 128K. With this setup you have the 'catchall' mailbox (the IMC inbound queue) and sorting is handled by the MTA.

Anyway, for matica the server config did not happen today

Oops, I'm starting to get like maxwell_t_edison with these answers (anyone who uses Tech Republic will probably understand)

Chris

 

[ChrisHirst]

Hi again.
Just found this site following a link about something else, I haven't browsed the site yet but it looks interesting .

Simpler Webb

http://www.swinc.com/resource/exchange.htm

Chris