[Resolved] Secondary Mail Servers

[pbarwich]

I run my own mail server on a fixed IP. (call it mydomain.com priority 10) For backup I have a contact who acts as secondary for me. (call it hisdomain.com priority 20)

First problem was he runs greylists on his server. (These demand confirmation the FIRST time a new IP sends mail. If the sender confirms all subsequent mails are accepted.) When Spamcop queried his server it returned an error 'please try later'. I contacted him and got him to turn off greylisting for a few hours. After that spamcop reported no errors.

The second problem was that I was expecting to receive TWO mails, one relayed from hisdomain.com, the other direct, which I could copy the source from and paste into your web site. I only ever got the direct mail. My concern is that should I get relayed spam and submit it to spamcop, his IP might get pulled from the relayed mail and get blacklisted. Clearly I don't want this, and nor does he. I have no reason to believe he spams.

Can someone either reassure me that all is well, or tell me how I should handle this?

Thanks

[Jeff G.]

At a time when both you and he are online at the same time, please have the Parser resend the account configuration email through his server, and have him watch his logs. If the email reaches his server but not yours, then the problem is on his or your server. If the email reaches your server but not you, then the problem is on your server or client.

[pbarwich]

It was a problem with greylisting basically, whereby the request for a resend by the receiving server needs to be human answered. Your automatic bots don't recognise it. When we (both!) killed greylisting it worked.

Thanks for your help.

[StevenUnderwood]

It was a problem with greylisting basically, whereby the request for a resend by the receiving server needs to be human answered. Your automatic bots don't recognise it. When we (both!) killed greylisting it worked.

28842[/snapback]

This is not grey-listing in the normal use of the word. This sounds more like challenge/response of which you will find many problems with that type of system (namely, innocent people receiving the challange from your server and rightly reporting it as spam). If this is what you are doing, please stop.

Greylisting usually indicates that the first message is rejected with a temporary error code, which indicated the sender should try again and when that retry happens within a certain amount of time, the message is passed through. There is no human intervention required for greylisting and messages will NOT be sent to forged email addresses in the From field.

[pbarwich]

Sorry, I guess I didn't explain too well. What we (both) had was a 'first mail rejected, please resend' type system. But my understanding of the Argosoft system is that while the resend could be automated, normally it is not, and the original sender has to resend by hand. I'd just turned mine on, so it caught out my secondary who I've had no problems with previously, his was on for some time, but didn't know about spamcop.net till I told him. Between us we'd managed to render passing your confirmation coded mail from my secondary server to my own, primary, server, impossible. Whatever, I have decided NOT to use the Argosoft implementation of grey listing, since I believe it can lead to loss of mails from legitimate automated senders such as forum passwords and the like.

[Jeff G.]

Thanks for the followup.