[Solved] Postfix - Can Send Mail But Not Received

[bardichobo]

Hello everyone.

Please forgive me if this is not the correct forum to post in, but I am fairly new to Debian, Postfix, Mail Servers, Domain DNS settings, etc.

I have installed and configured postfix and dovecot, and am successfully able to send emails, but for some reason I cannot receive them. I believe its got something to do with my MX records, but again I have no clue. I would provide some logs/details, but I dont' know what is needed and I also am not sure what would be considered 'insecure' to share.

Thanks,

[dilberts_left_nut]

I believe its got something to do with my MX records

What makes you think that?
What happens when you try?

I would provide some logs/details, but I dont' know what is needed and I also am not sure what would be considered 'insecure' to share.

Well if your server is online it's already known to the world, so your ip & hostname is already public anyway.

[bardichobo]

Hello, thanks for the reply.

As far as why I believe its my MX record. Mainly because sending works just fine, but when I try to email myself, (from a different email address), it doesn't show up. There isn't any sort of bounce back email, it just doesn't go anywhere. I am assuming that it hits the mx record then vanishes. Right now I have my site attached to victorychurchruffin.com. the only valid emails are daniel@victorychurchruffin.com and info@victorychurchruffin.com. Don't worry, this is not meant for a production environment.

Where I am at, right now, I cannot seem to copy and paste my main.cf file here. If you would like I can manually type out what it is, if you let me know what you would like to see.

Thank you!

[bardichobo]

This just in!

My Other email finally, (after about 24 hours), did return an error,

454 4.7.1 <info@victorychurchruffin.com>: Relay access denied

Honestly, I'm not too sure what this means, but its almost like somethings just not set correctly in my Main.cf file. Any ideas?

[GarryRicketson]

This seems to be a common enough problem that there are search results on this error, maybe try that first:
email 454 4.7.1 Relay access denied

The first hit has this:How to fix error “454 4.7.1 Relay access denied” in Postfix mail servers

This error message is also seen due to improper configuration settings of Postfix, such as relaying and recipient settings.

I decided not to post the url of the first hit, it is a commercial site, but it did have some info, and there are plenty of others that go into detail on this, I don't have the time to read them for you , and copy/paste the info here, you should be able to read them yourself, and then if there is still something you don't understand or need help with, post the configurations you have and details.
====== edit ====

My Other email finally, (after about 24 hours), did return an error,

It can take up to,or over a week for e-mails to return, but yes they do eventually return.

[bardichobo]

Yes, sorry. Right after I posted that, I immediately realized I can just as easily google the error myself. I have looked into it, and after making some changes on my server and rebooting, I realized my IP wasn't correctly set to static, and now I have to wait to get to my server to correct that before I can change. My guess is that I need to change the "Mynetworks" portion of the main.cf file. I will update on either Sunday or Monday with what I find!

Thank you,

[GarryRicketson]

My guess is that I need to change the "Mynetworks" portion of the main.cf file.

That is quite possible, it is 1 of the many things that could cause the problem, perhaps the most common. Of course , with out seeing your "main.cf" file , one can only guess.

--- snip --not sure what would be considered 'insecure' to share.

There is enough documentation on setting up postfix,and dovecot that you should be able to trouble shoot this with out sharing any sensitive info.
I noticed you do not mention what instructions or tutorial you used to install and configure your postfix and dove cot, but my guess is, you might need to either look at some different instructions, or go through the ones you used carefully, and make sure you did not miss something, make sure your hostnames are correct, no typos, etc. It is a tedious process.

[bardichobo]

Alright, sorry it took so long to post a reply, but I did manage to figure it out. I had, on my main.cf a line that says, relay_domains that I thought, if I set it equal to nothing, it would allow all, but when I got rid of the variable all together, it started allowing all.

[dcihon]

You probably want to read the section on relay_domains here:
http://www.postfix.org/postconf.5.html
You don't want your mail server to be a relay for other mail servers. Other mail servers will black list you.
There are sites on the internet that can test your mail server to make sure it is not a relay server.
Good luck