Cannot send any Outbound email

Submitted by bruno05 on Thu, 02/06/2014 - 20:39

Hi,

We have 2 servers using virtualmin and both of them work fine except for outbound email. There are no users on the server for recieveing any inbound email. Just websites. All of the websites have the same outbound email address. The websites send out email from contact forms, reports notifications etc. Nothing is working.

Email for the domain is hosted at Microsoft Exchange server.

  1. I have looked at forums, documentation and still have not figured out this issue.
  2. Webmin/virtualmin has 3 /4 mail servers. Not sure why and this is confusing - Postfix, Dovecot, Sendmail etc.

All I need help is to send up a the simplest way for outbound email to work.

Very frustrated and need help.

bruno

Status: 
Active

Comments

Submitted by JamieCameron on Thu, 02/06/2014 - 21:42

Any chance we can login to your system to look into this?

Regarding the mail server, a default Virtualmin install uses Postfix, and you should never need to change that.

Submitted by bruno05 on Thu, 02/06/2014 - 23:46

Hi Jamie,

Of Course. Do you need full access to the system? what modules? I guess I can set up an admin ID. Bruno

Submitted by bruno05 on Fri, 02/07/2014 - 01:48

i emailed the details to you.

bruno

Submitted by bruno05 on Fri, 02/07/2014 - 09:38

Hi Jamie,

Any Update? Did you get the credentials?

Bruno

Submitted by andreychek on Fri, 02/07/2014 - 10:01

Jamie hasn't had an opportunity to look yet -- but he'll let you know if there's anything else he needs.

Submitted by JamieCameron on Fri, 02/07/2014 - 11:30

Thanks, I got the login details and will take a look at your system in a couple of hours.

Can you also tell us how I can trigger sending an email from your system, using whatever script or app isn't working for you?

Submitted by JamieCameron on Fri, 02/07/2014 - 18:47

BTW, one thing I noticed was that your system's hostname is cmserver2.neovisture.com , but that name cannot be resolved in DNS. You should add a record for this with the correct IP to the DNS domain for neovisture.com

Submitted by bruno05 on Sat, 02/08/2014 - 11:31

Hi,

I am not understanding. The host name of the server is actually cmserver2.neovisture.us which resolves to the IP address of this server - 198.74.231.49.

There is another website called cms2.neovisture.com - which is set up as a virtual server. It is a test site and not really being used.

I do not see a cmserver2.neovisture.com.

TO test an email. Just go to the following site.

  1. http://demo.neovisture.com
  2. Click on Contact from the main menu.
  3. Send an email and make sure you copy yourself.

Let me know if you need anything else.

Thank you again for your help.

Bruno

Submitted by JamieCameron on Sat, 02/08/2014 - 12:21

Thanks - I sent myself a test email to a gmail address, and while it did arrive it was classified as spam.

The reason is that in the neovisture.com domain (which isn't hosted by your Virtualmin system) the SPF DNS record does not designate the system's IP of 198.74.231.49 as a permitted sender.

You need to change the SPF record from :

neovisture.com.         3600    IN      TXT     "v=spf1 include:outlook.com ~all"

to :

neovisture.com.         3600    IN      TXT     "v=spf1 include:outlook.com ip4:198.74.231.49 ~all"

Submitted by bruno05 on Tue, 02/11/2014 - 23:14

Thanks for the update. One question. All email from Neovisture.com is managed by Office365. So there are SPF records related to that. So if I specifically add the IP address, will it disable or break anything else?

bruno

Submitted by andreychek on Tue, 02/11/2014 - 23:43

In your SPF records, you would need to specify every IP address that might relay email for your domain as an allowed sender.

Doing so should not break anything. If SPF is enabled, all IP addresses that might relay email need to be included, or email may get marked as spam. However, you also have the option of disabling SPF, if you don't wish to specify all the IP's. You can disable that in Server Configuration -> DNS Options.

If you had any further questions regarding email setup, you'd want to use the Forums for that, since what you're seeing isn't a Virtualmin issue, and you appear to be using Virtualmin GPL there. We monitor the Forums, along with lots of wonderful folks in the community. Thanks!