Dedicated server email setup

[colinhall]

Hi all,

I have a dedicated server set up to host a number of sites. All is well, except my clients are unable to send email!

Receiving is fine, but I'm confused by SMTP setup, and my server provider is serious lacking support.

They suggest I use outgoing and incoming servers as 'mail.mydomain' but I'm getting the error from outlook saying the server was found but didn't respond...I've tried a variety of ports, all to no avail.

Does anyone have a quick checklist I could go through?

Thank you all!!

Colin

[wmorri]

Hi,

Can you tell us what mail server you have set up on the server so that we can figure out a guide or some steps for you to go through. Or if you don't have a mail server set up so that we can go about getting you a server that will work for you. What type of server software is on there now? Is it an LAMP, XAMP, or IIS server?

Cheers!

[colinhall]

Hi there, than you so much for the quick response :-D

Here's the thing...I haven't installed a mail server, but I believe the dedicated server has postfix installed (I'm pretty clueless at the moment of how the mail side of things work...but I'm a very quick and willing learner!)

The server is LAMP I believe - I've been told by the admin there that the email will work on Outlook.

I can send and receive email perfectly well using SquirrelMail - no problems at all there. I believe the settings SquirrelMail uses are 'localhost' for SMTP and IMAP/POP (which would be the server IP???) and port 25 for SMTP. Tried these on outlook (SMTP = server IP and port = 25), but no luck.

I also have the SMTP relay on my server set to Enabled (Authorised) - this was suggested by the Fasthosts support team.

I feel like I'm close, but still can't quite get it to connect...I'm going nuts!

Any ideas would be much appreciated...even something to just nudge me in the right direction...

Thanks for your time,

Colin

[wmorri]

Hi,

Ok so you have an email server set up and it is working with webmail which is good. I guess the next thing is to figure out what ports are being used but the server so that you can make sure that the ports are the same on Outlook. STMP is usually 25, and POP is 110, unless you are using SSL in which they are STMP is 465, and POP is 995.

Cheers!

[colinhall]

Thanks for your help on this, I really do appreciate it!

I tried both sets of ports - POP: 110 receives email fine, but SMTP: 25 doesn't connect.

Here's the reply I got from Fasthosts (my server provider):

"Dear Colin

Thanks for contacting us with your support enquiry.

You should not need to install any additional software to send and recieve email using Outlook.

However, as previously indicated by my colleague, your ISP may be blocking traffic on port 25.

If this is the case then you may need to configure your server to respond to smtp requests on port 587.

If you are unable to do this yourself then our engineers could undertake this task on your behalf.

This would involve a Personal engineers service charge at £60 per half hour of work."


I'm going to give it a go changing the server to respond on port 587 - I know it's only going to be a 10min job at most, but they'll probably spend a couple of hours doing it to con me!

Does their response seem feasible?

Thanks a million,

Colin

[Istanbul_Lfc]

If your server is connected to internet with a router. Log onto your router config page and open port 25. I host my own server too and can receive and send mail via webmail but haven't tried an email client yet.

Its worth a try.