# Postfix mail being sent, never arrives.

## infecticide

I'm trying to setup email notifications for my websites so that when a user creates an account an email is sent to them for verification, I'm using Drupal.

I can send and receive email just fine with postfix in Thunderbird.

The following comes up in the log files when the mail is sent after the user creates their account.

```

Nov 23 10:17:04 [postfix/pickup] D109DC00110: uid=81 from=<apache>

Nov 23 10:17:04 [postfix/cleanup] D109DC00110: message-id=<20071123161704.D109DC00110@server.domain.net>

Nov 23 10:17:04 [postfix/qmgr] D109DC00110: from=<apache@domain.net>, size=1134, nrcpt=1 (queue active)

Nov 23 10:17:05 [postfix/smtp] D109DC00110: to=<user@hotmail.com>, relay=mx1.hotmail.com[65.54.245.8]:25, delay=0.68, delays=0.05/0.01/0.25/0.38, dsn=2.0.0, status=sent (250  <20071123161704.D109DC00110@server.domain.net> Queued mail for delivery)

Nov 23 10:17:05 [postfix/qmgr] D109DC00110: removed

```

The email never arrives at hotmail and I never get a failure email back.

Any ideas?

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## magic919

Hotmail servers silently dumping it or sidelining as spam.

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## infecticide

Is there a way to prevent this?   I checked the spam folder and they're not arriving there.

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## magic919

Apart from not sending them to Hotmail...?

You can take some steps.  Hotmail and some other providers will want to see your machine has a static IP, reverse DNS that maps back to the domain, valid From address on the message and a valid domain.  They may even take note of SPF these days I think, although my domains don't use it and have no problems.  Correct and valid FQHN used in the HELO too.

Can't 100% guarantee that everyone will accept your mail all the time but that should do it.

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## infecticide

- My machine does have a static ip

- I created a mailbox for the user I am sending automated email as.

What do you mean about "reverse DNS that maps back to the domain?"

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## magic919

You have a static IP.  When you do an nslookup/dig whatever on that IP does it resolve to yourmachine.example.com.  That's what I mean about the reverse DNS.  Should resolve to something - yet some do not...

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## infecticide

I think I see what's happened.

The IP address is resolving to my ISP's DNS name for the ip address:

```

nslookup 24.72.ooo.xxx

Name:    static24-72-ooo-xxx.city.accesscomm.ca

Address:  24.72.ooo.xxx

```

Would that do it?

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## Dagger

I would recommend this website. This will check few spam blacklists and gives all the reasons why you're there. As long as you are on this list you can forget about sending emails to people who don't like spam.

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## depontius

 *infecticide wrote:*   

> I think I see what's happened.
> 
> The IP address is resolving to my ISP's DNS name for the ip address:
> 
> ```
> ...

 

It might.  The fact that forward and reverse DNS disagree indicates that you're trying to send out mail directly from inside an ISP service.  The most likely conclusion is that your system has been compromised and is a bot spewing spam.  That's not to say that you are, that's just the most likely thing to be happening in this circumstance.  Like good little sheep, we're supposed to relay through our ISPs smart relay.  That also gives them a leg on fighting outgoing spam, if they choose to use it.  To be fair, the "spamspewing bot" assumption is probably usually justified.

Personally I use the outbound relay service at DynDNS.org and have an SPF record to match it.  You have to authenticate in order to relay out.

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## infecticide

Well my ip isn't on the blacklist, so I can only assume the rDNS issue is culperate.

But why then can I send email from my mail client successfully?  I should point out that most, if not all of my mail ends up in the spam folder at hotmail but at least it gets there.

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## magic919

You can't really be 100% sure why one specific provider is dumping your mail.  If they published all the details it would be great.  I guess they don't want spammers working around it.

They might not like your helo, your FQDN, reverse DNS, your subnet, your provider's network, your email address etc.

Your email client is none the wiser.  It just hands off to Postfix.

It would be great if they refused the email rather than quietly dumping it, of course.

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## xbmodder

Hotmail, Yahoo, and several other mail providers have been known to throw out mail from home IP addresses. You can try to find a relay, but that rarely works

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