Hi,
We have our email hosted with Rackspace. We are having a problem with receiving email from hotmail/msn user accounts. It is a random problem. The hotmail/msn user may receive a bounce back message, but successfully can resend the message by forwarding it. This problem has just started in the last two weeks. The same users receiving email bounce backs have been sending message to our Rackspace accounts for 4 months prior without any problems.
Our domain account is hosted by GoDaddy. We have the MXRecords pointed to Rackspace email servers.
Hotmail users are getting the following bounce back email message:
Reporting-MTA: dns;snt0-omc4-s31.snt0.hot
Received-From-MTA: dns;SNT116-W56
Arrival-Date: Thu, 13 Aug 2009 15:03:58 -0700
Final-Recipient: rfc822;pstrfstr@clchr.org
Action: failed
Status: 5.7.1
Diagnostic-Code: smtp;550 5.7.1 Unable to relay for pstrfstr@clchr.org
I have contacted Rackspace and they say the email has not even made it to their servers and that it looks like a hotmail issue. I am not sure if it is a hotmail or Rackspace issue. Could the MXRecords at GoDaddy be configured wrong?
Please advise.
Thanks,
Roger
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This is the response from Rackspace. I think that they are trying to say they do not even have a record on their side of bouncing this particular email. I am not sure, maybe you could help me interpret.
This message shows that iwas bounce was sent back from hotmail and not recieved by our servers. The
message of Unable to relay for pstrfstr@clchr.org normally means that it does not know where to send
the mail. Some causes of this are the DNS did not respond quick enough or hotmail.com is holding old
data. I would recommend checking with your DNS provider first regarding this and then if it is then
contacting hotmail to verify that there is no issues on there end when sending mail for your domain.
No, they must have record of bounced email. Every email server has log and server stores there all accepted, rejected, dropped emails.
They must be able to read reason "why" some email was bounced.
Maybe hotmail really sends something wrong,
but administrator of email server (in Rackspace) is surely able to investigate it and tell you what is wrong with it.
For example he can have set some spam policy and hotmail send something which match spam criteria even it is not spam.
Send all bounced message including headers to administrator, not only error code with error text.
Regarding to DNS:
yes, check name in your MX records really translates to IP address of your email server (try dig or nslookup or ping to it)
and in bounced email check if sender IP address is the same like your email server IP address. (look in header of bounced message)
(Maybe they have several email servers and sometimes email from hotmail accepted by different server that yours for unknown reason).
If DNS is OK, I think administrator of your email server is right person to tell you what is wrong with your emails.
The bounced message did not have an attachment. I created a hotmail account and I am able to send emails out with no bounce back.
I went ahead and put the specific hotmail user account on the safelist of our email provider for our domain.
1) Should this fix the problem if it is really on the Rackspace side? Will the safelist override any blacklists?
We do have a list of email servers blacklisted, because we were receiving a ton of spam, but all these were oversees servers. They are below. How do I figure out if one is really a hotmail server? Is there a list of all the hotmail servers somewhere?
189.71.204.9
195.174.4.104
200.216.70.206
201.92.242.59
84.228.78.192
84.238.129.118
85.99.130.146
88.234.45.182
88.248.109.233
Thanks,
Roger
I read a similar post in other website and they mention that some email servers checks the A records instead of the MX records and hotmail did that (as per the post).
now if this is the case you can do the following
you can either disable the SMTP service on your webhost if enabled or check your A records. I found out that your mx records are as follows:
mx1.emailsrvr.com points to 98.129.184.3
mx2.emailsrvr.com points to 98.129.184.4
Do you have any A records with same name and points to different IP address? I pinged the first and it reply to 66.216.118.97 which seems to be your webhost. either there is an A record name as mx1.emailsrvr.com or maybe there *.emailsrvr.com
to solve this you can disable smtp if enabled or adjust the A records to point to correct IPs of your server
I hope my assumptions are correct and I wish that can solve your problem
If you have MX records set then you should never have to change any 'A' record. The sending server would be in serious violation if it attempted delivery on 'A' records when you have 'MX' records set up.
If a mail server tries to deliver a message for a domain, where there are NO MX records then it may attempt delivery on 'A' records, but this is the only scenario where it is acceptable.
I would look at the 'header' of the bounce messaged from hotmail and find out what email server generated the non-delivery report. It may not be rackspace, but perhaps the hotmail server that generated the non delivery report.
Of course check that your MX records are ok, but you would most likely not get any delivery if they are not correct so I doubt this is the problem.
Shaun
shauncroucher - thanks for your comments
This specific hotmail user is unable to send any email to anyone in our email domain. There is not much to go on as far as header information. This is all there is. What can I do with this to track down the problem?
Reporting-MTA: dns;snt0-omc4-s23.snt0.hot
Received-From-MTA: dns;SNT116-W14
Arrival-Date: Fri, 14 Aug 2009 08:03:36 -0700
Final-Recipient: rfc822;mbehnke@clchr.org
Action: failed
Status: 5.7.1
Diagnostic-Code: smtp;550 5.7.1 Unable to relay for mbehnke@clchr.org
Thanks,
Roger
I hope this is the problem. I always set the A records to be pointing to same IP of the mx records. in your case they don't which may trigger the problem you have. Your mx records are not same as your domain name as per the report I got from mxtoolbox.com. Shared hosting? seems like. As my practice I will always create records for all the domains I have to be matched
probably if you have access control for godaddy account you can check that yourself
I am not sure that you are on the right track, but unless have any better idea then I suggest you talk to them.
mdbanat - thanks for your additional information.
Basically, for the A Record to be the problem, someone would have created an A Record with the name
mx1.emailsrvr.com or *.emailsrvr.com as our email server MX Record, then pointed them to a different server. This is the only way the A Record could be the problem. Am I understanding this correctly?
Thanks,
Roger
yes this is what I meant and I hope I am correct. Some email servers will read the mx records of your domain which are correct (otherwise you won't receive any email) then instead of sending to that ip they send to the name. in this case they send to different ip unless you have the A records pointing to the same IP.
I never proved that, but I guess this is how it works with some servers. Try and see. I hope it is correct and I hope this is the reason of the problem. In all cases I am sure after you talk to them they will be able to guide you.
I think this guy has similar problem http://windowslivehelp.com
according to the post, he solved it by adjusting the A records. In your case you won't have the risk of doing changes because you will talk to your provider first. It is somehow similar to what I was talking about.
Talk to them and post the results or feedback here.
good luck
Thanks for all your input. I have not been able to change our A Records yet, but I am fairly confident this is our problem with Microsoft. there are a lot of other people complaining about Microsoft server using the A Record instead of the MX Records. Our setup is very similiar in architecture to those that have identified the problem.
I am going to award the points now, so I do not forget. I will post the outcome on Monday when we can get things changes. Unfortunately, the provider that we are using does not have very good weekend support, for that reason we are in the process of trying to move away from them.
Thanks again.
Business Accounts
Answer for Membership
by: peter41Posted on 2009-08-13 at 23:57:12ID: 25095709
Check if source IP of bounced messsage always the same like IP address in your MX record.
SMTP error code 550 means:
Requested action not taken: mailbox unavailable
(e.g. mailbox not found or no access)
"...the email has not even made it to their servers"
If I understand good, they say that email was not targeted to their server ?
There is target email address address pstrfstr@clchr.org and this mailbox must be registered in target email server directly or like alias, so sufficient is to look into mailbox list in server configuration and check if it is (or is not) there.
In my opinion problem should solve Rackspace, because they give you IP address of your MS records and they can check why their server bounces messages from hotmail.