Another webhost mailing problem

[xoggoth]

Yet again, having email problems on my website. Test emails to myself do not work and there's a failure message in the default email box:

A message that you sent could not be delivered to one or more of its
recipients. This is a permanent error. The following address(es) failed:

[email protected]

retry time not reached for any host after a long failure period

The email address is correct, this is a long standing test script that usually works and it has not been altered recently. The almost identical version using gmail instead of the host's PHP mail works ok.

Any brill ideas why this suddenly started happening? Ta.

PS Dunno if related but recently I had trouble getting an online Turkish visa. Their support said they had the problem with btinternet addresses and I should try another address, which worked.

[NoddY]

The source of the email (the webhost or any relay it's using) is periodically falling into BT's spam blacklists. BT's is using Critical Path for ingress emails for domain btinternet.com

[xoggoth]

Ta Noddy. Change them all to gmail version. Working at mo, but how long until they get blacklisted?

[xoggoth]

Apparently a database corruption can also cause this.

T=remote_smtp defer (-53): retry time not reached for any host - cPanel Forums

Emailing is the biggest f* problem going! I think 9 out of 10 website errors I waste my time on are due to some email problem. Note to all website people, always save orders etc in MySQL and check regularly, don't rely on emails working!

PS My avatar is probably the most appropriate on CUK. Rant! Rant!

[yorkshireman]

Mail not being delivered to BTInternet.com

Have you got SPF and DKIM (DomainKeys Identified Mail) setup properly for the domain/server you are sending from?

The trend is definitely towards Yahoo and other ISPs treating messages without DKIM as possible SPAM (Especially if you send the identical check message multiple times).

I suspect your problem will only get worse over time.

Gmail is a great option and it is easy to write a script in php say to send via their SMTP service. Do you have a Google Apps domain that you can use to send the messages from. It is easy to setup DKIM on Google Apps.

Yet again, having email problems on my website. Test emails to myself do not work and there's a failure message in the default email box:

A message that you sent could not be delivered to one or more of its
recipients. This is a permanent error. The following address(es) failed:

[email protected]

retry time not reached for any host after a long failure period

The email address is correct, this is a long standing test script that usually works and it has not been altered recently. The almost identical version using gmail instead of the host's PHP mail works ok.

Any brill ideas why this suddenly started happening? Ta.

PS Dunno if related but recently I had trouble getting an online Turkish visa. Their support said they had the problem with btinternet addresses and I should try another address, which worked.

[xoggoth]

Cheers. Just checked SPF and DKIM appear to be set up ok and only sent a couple of test mails. The problem seems to have disappeared again so maybe a temporary glitch at BT? May just leave it with gmail anyway.

[NoddY]

For UNIX based systems, if anyone is looking for something simple and secure (it's not a daemon, nor mail server) to forward mail to a smarthost (like Gmail) I can recommend SSMTP.

https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/SSMTP

Been using it trouble free for years. It supports TLS and the config file is straightforward. They'll be variations per OS on how you're replacing the default mail program (e.g. sendmail) to watch out for.