open relays, blacklisted on AOL, ip literals.

[majik]

Sometime between Tuesday and Saturday, my server was blocked by AOL from sending e-mail to its users. If anybody I host tries to send mail to an aol address, they receive an error stating that due to too much spam they won't accept e-mails from my server/domains. They are also linked to:
http://postmaster.info.aol.com/ors.html
where I can test for open relays. The problem is that it says it will send an e-mail to "postmaster@IPaddress" and "root@IPaddress" with the results of the test, but then I try to send email to root@[MyServerIP] and postmaster@[MyServerIP] and it doesn't go through and get the error "550 <postmaster@[my server ip]>... Host unknown (Name server: [my server ip]: host not found)" So...

I *tried* modifying exim.conf by uncommenting "local_domains_include_host_literals"
# If you want to accept mail addressed to your host's literal IP address, for
# example, mail addressed to "user@[111.111.111.111]", then uncomment the
# following line, or supply the literal domain(s) as part of "local_domains"
# above.

local_domains_include_host_literals

but would get a "Exim configuration error" on exim.conf when I tried restarting exim


Before submiting my server's IP to that AOL page, I disabled (again!..damn updates!) all the formmail scripts in the cgi-sys/ dir.


I tested for open relays on my server at:
http://www.email-test.com/cgi-bin/we...show_openrelay
as suggested by tAzMaNiAc in this post:
http://forums.cpanel.net/showthread....0634#post47834
but the results say there are no open relays.


I came across this post regarding /scripts/upcp:
http://forums.cpanel.net/showthread....=1849#post7589
but my CPanel is up-to-date...plus that post is from last Dec.


I *tried* adding "receiver_verify" to my exim.conf as mentioned here:
http://forums.cpanel.net/showthread....0634#post47833
but would get a "Exim configuration error" on exim.conf when I tried restarting exim


I changed the elapsed time for smpt authentication as mentioned here:
http://forums.cpanel.net/showthread....0098#post61755


So I submitted my IP and hoped that the little I did manage to do would solve the problem w/ spammers using my server, but seeing how I woudln't be getting the e-mail AOL sends out, I'd just have to wait 24 hrs to see if I can e-mail to AOL once again....


Well...that was over 36hrs ago and still can't send mail to aol.


Take in mind that I searched for "formmail" in the files exim_rejectlog, exim_mainlog, and apache's access_log and the only ones it finds are in May 19 (1 hit) and July 25 (2 hits).


Is there something I'm missing to make sure my server's aren't being used to spam exploiting open relays or by other means?

How can I allow email to be sent to root@[MyServerIP] and postmaster@[MyServerIP] ? Just uncommenting local_domains_include_host_literals would give me erros. I want to at least know why AOL's blocking e-mails.

Or......did i do things right (unlikely) and just have to wait till AOL actually un-lists my server from their blacklist?

Any help/suggestions would be highly appreciated,

Thanks!
majik

cPanel.net Support Ticket Number:

[bmcpanel]

I am having this same exact problem on one of my web servers running RH 6.2, Apache 1.3.28 with latest stable CP build.

Any email sent from any customer on this server to an AOL email address comes back to the customer.

cPanel.net Support Ticket Number:

[compunet2]

I had the same problem.... I had to have reverse dns installed & give them a contact abuse email address for their records for my server. The only way I figured this out was after calling the AOL postmaster at: 703-265-4670.

cPanel.net Support Ticket Number:

[rbmatt]

Consider yourself lucky, our mails to AOL just get blackholed. Our clients think AOLers are getting mail, but actually don't.
The tools on AOLs postmaster site never seemed to work for me. You need to "Change where system mail goes" and forward it to an actual address, but we never got a report.

We are still having AOL troubles, and we have called that number several, SEVERAL times. They are not efficient at all. As far as I know we have an unread ticket in with them to fix it. We just arent important to them.

cPanel.net Support Ticket Number:

[ciphervendor]

Originally posted by rbmatt
Consider yourself lucky, our mails to AOL just get blackholed. Our clients think AOLers are getting mail, but actually don't.
The tools on AOLs postmaster site never seemed to work for me. You need to "Change where system mail goes" and forward it to an actual address, but we never got a report.

We are still having AOL troubles, and we have called that number several, SEVERAL times. They are not efficient at all. As far as I know we have an unread ticket in with them to fix it. We just arent important to them.

cPanel.net Support Ticket Number:

AOL does NOT black hole email out of the blue. This only happens if your machine is throwing multiple thousands/millions of emails at their servers per hour.

Their postmaster group is incredibly easy to deal with and any issue can be resolved quickly as long as you know what you're speaking about. AOL has no idea how large a company you are or what relationships you have with their company so they tend to treat everyone equally. Don't have attitude when you call and know what you're talking about. Following that could actually lead to an expedited fix.

cPanel.net Support Ticket Number:

[majik]

Thanks for the feedback...


I already have the "Change where system mail goes" setting specified to a my e-mail address, but I haven't received any reports from their test, or even of any reports of abuse. I'm assuming this *should* route mail sent to postmaster@[ip] to the e-mail address specified? Am I right about this? Well, as I mentioned, I did try this and it didn't go through. I submitted the IP to AOL Postmaster's open relay test. I will also give AOL a call.

Keep more feedback coming

cPanel.net Support Ticket Number:

[majik]

Originally posted by majik
Thanks for the feedback...


I already have the "Change where system mail goes" setting specified to a my e-mail address, but I haven't received any reports from their test, or even of any reports of abuse. I'm assuming this *should* route mail sent to postmaster@[ip] to the e-mail address specified? Am I right about this? Well, as I mentioned, I did try this and it didn't go through. I submitted the IP to AOL Postmaster's open relay test. I will also give AOL a call.

Keep more feedback coming

cPanel.net Support Ticket Number:

I called AOL. They said what compunet2 had mentioned, get rDNS installed. Contacted the appropriate people to get that done. Hopefully that will take care of the problem.


Thanks gang.

cPanel.net Support Ticket Number:

[rbmatt]

Originally posted by ciphervendor
AOL does NOT black hole email out of the blue. This only happens if your machine is throwing multiple thousands/millions of emails at their servers per hour.

Their postmaster group is incredibly easy to deal with and any issue can be resolved quickly as long as you know what you're speaking about. AOL has no idea how large a company you are or what relationships you have with their company so they tend to treat everyone equally. Don't have attitude when you call and know what you're talking about. Following that could actually lead to an expedited fix.

cPanel.net Support Ticket Number:

Well, they havent dealt with us at all. I dont wish to go into detail, but everything they say is wrong is simply not true. Everyone has been polite to them when calling, and we have no evidence of mass spam. We have NEVER gotten any bounces about spam, which I believe we would have gotten in the beginning.
I dont know for sure that we are blackholed, but none gets through.
I hope you have better luck than we have. Maybe its just us...

cPanel.net Support Ticket Number:

[nickn]

For what it matters, our servers emails were getting blackholed to AOL too, we called them, they acknowledged it, opened an emergency ticket to get it fixed, hopefully it's resolved soon, don't let them tell you it won't happen...or doesn't happen...

cPanel.net Support Ticket Number:

[Elikster]

Have anyone figured out how to get that postmaster part added to be sent to root to be forwarded so we can deal with AOL?

We are getting lot of those problems and AOL is just making it difficult for us to resolve if we cannot even get any emails that is sent to postmaster@ipaddress which there seems to be no mechanism for getting it.

How about it, Cpanel developers? How about adding that in so we can get those emails.

cPanel.net Support Ticket Number:

[rfonseca]

You need to call them. Mine was blocked recently too. I called (on hold for 10 min) and reached someone who was very friendly and checked out the problem. Apparently there was no specific reason for my case . I already had RDNS and removed formmail a long time ago. At any rate, the issue was resolved within 48 hrs of my call. Give it a try.

cPanel.net Support Ticket Number:

[JPmorgan]

[QUOTE]Originally posted by thaphantom
2) you cant accept mail to postmaster@IPADDRESS

[QUOTE]

So, how do you accept mail to postmaster@ipaddress?

cPanel.net Support Ticket Number:

[rfonseca]

I told them I couldn't accept postmaster@ipaddress and they simply asked for an alternate email addr for contact.

cPanel.net Support Ticket Number:

[dave9000]

you can accept mail from root@ip and postmaster@ip

add your mail server mx ip to the /etc/local_domain

then send system mail to a valid mailbox

[easyhoster1]

Not sure if this is truw or not, AOL seems to be blocking servers that bounce bad addresses to them.

Take a look here