Problems sending to freeserve accounts with Exchange 2

[THerman]

Have recently inherited an Exchange server from a competing support provider who left it in a bit of a state. One issue that is outstanding (that apparently has only been a problem the last few weeks) is that email to any address at freeserve will not work.

These messages seem to sit in the queue without being transmitted, and if I bring up the properties they report retrying - SMTP protocol error.

The Exchange server delivers mail via DNS using Demon's DNS servers for resolution. I wondered if the problem was because freeserve accounts give you sub-domain names - e.g. fred@freddynet.freeserve.co.uk . Mail for this address should be handled by smtp.freeserve.co.uk (I have actually tried telnetting to this and manually sending the mail using the correct MAIL FROM and RCPT TO addresses, and they deliver fine).

I thought the problem was that the exchange server was trying to connect to port 25 on a host freddynet.freeserve.co.uk instead of being correctly re-directed to smtp.freeserve.co.uk (how does that work anyway???)

Following this line a little further (it was late). I tried adding entries in the servers DNS and hosts file to make it resolve freddynet.freeserve.co.uk to the IP of smtp.freeserve.co.uk but this made no difference.

Using my test Exchange server at home, I can send to freeserve accounts fine, however I have heard one other customer complain of a similar issue that I haven't investigated yet. I do not know the level of the service pack on this server at present - I will be trying to upgrade to SP3 later - however I first need to resolve some disk space issues related to transaction logs that I have another post about.

Anyway, those who have bothered to read all this, any comment's / ideas would be greatly appreciated as this is driving me mad. Cheers!

 

[THerman]

Managed to solve this problem. Make sure the domain name found within SMTP Virtual server is correct. Mine was for some reason configured PDCname.domainname.co.uk when it should have been just domainname.co.uk Freeserve SMTP servers are now doing a lookup on this domain name, supplied in the HELO command, and comparing it to your source IP DNS address. If it does not match it chucks you out. Had to use an IP sniffer to spot this one.

 

[Donkey1]

THerman...

I was having the same problem with freeserve outgoing emails with our EX2K server. I got round it by adding a connector to our ISP and forwarding all freeserve emails to it as a smart host.

When you say make sure the domain name in the virtual smtp server is set correctly, where would one find that setting?

Thanks...Andy.

 

[THerman]

Time flies and not been checking my threads. Come to think of it, email notification didnt work - perhaps my hotmail was full at the time....

Anyway, Go to START -> PROGRAMS -> MICROSOFT EXCHANGE -> SYSTEM MANAGER -> SERVERS -> SERVERNAME -> PROTOCOLS -> SMTP -> DEFAULT SMTP VIRTUAL SERVER -> PROPERTIES -> DELIVERY -> ADVANCED -> Fully Qualified Domain name.

Hope this is useful.

-Tim

 

[toontechie]

one of my clients had exactly the same problem... however they had an underscore in their machine name. removing the underscore (and spending about 10 hours exporting/importing the databases!!) did the trick.

 

[JonnyRep]

I have Exchange 5.5 SP4 running on Win2000 SP4 and have also inherted the same problem with freeserve but found that my mail server does have an underscore in it.

I want to change this but am wary of the effect it will have on incoming and outgoing mail (e.g. downtime) and if there is anything else I need to do apart from take out the underscore on the server.

Can anyone help?

 

[THerman]

Going back to my original problem with Exchange 2000 SP3. Although the name was PDCname.domainname.co.uk and should have been domainname.co.uk, PDCname was actually ABC_PDC (name has been changed to protect the innocent). There IS an underscore in it, however it still works now I have changed the FQDN to just domainname.co.uk. No other problems with this mail server sending to freeserve.

Maybe things are different for some reason with Exchange 5.5, but I don't see why - you would still send same info to freeserve in your HELO command in the SMTP protocol. Underscores are not permitted in domain names to my knowledge. Putting them in host names is not reccomended, but I don't see why this would present any problem in this case. Have you used a packet sniffer to see exactly what the breakdown in SMTP is????

If not, try Ethereal - it's free.

-Tim Herman