Emails from ebay being rejected

[bblboy54]

Hello,
I recently migrated to a new DA server from an old DA server and everything seems to be working great except I've found that emails from ebay are not coming through to me. Looking in the logs I found:

2012-07-22 23:52:23 H=mxslcpool65.ebay.com [66.135.215.167] F=<[email protected]> rejected RCPT <[email protected]>: Unrouteable address
2012-07-22 23:52:23 H=mxslcpool65.ebay.com [66.135.215.167] incomplete transaction (RSET) from <[email protected]>

I changed the email address but the equivalent email that ebay is sending mail to is [email protected] and hostname.domain.com is the server's hostname. I am using Exim with SpamAssassin and I am seriously confused To me it looks like ebay is trying to send email to my MX record instead of to my domain.

Any help would be appreciated!

 

[scsi]

Try a routing test:

http://bradthemad.org/tech/notes/exim_cheatsheet.php

Make sure the receiving email has proper mx records.

Try a raw smtp test:

http://ignite.digitalignition.net/2011/04/04/raw-smtp-sending/

 

[bblboy54]

The problem is that the email address that its being sent to in the logs doesn't exist and I'm not sure why it's showing up that way as there are no email addresses at hostname.domain.com since that is only the server's host name so in that aspect exim is correct that [email protected] is an unrouteable address. I couldn't see ebay making up it's own email address based on the MX records for domain.com so why is an email being delivered to that address?

 

[scsi]

You could try using http://www.nobaloney.net/spamblocker.html and upgrading your exim to the current version.

cd /usr/local/directadmin/custombuild
./build set exim yes
./build clean
./build update
./build exim d

 

[bblboy54]

The entire DirectAdmin server I am using is less than 2 weeks old. If anything my guess would be something in the newer versions is the issue vs having a version that is older.

 

[nobaloney]

Create the address. (do it in a serverwide aliases file as a forwarder to something you read. Then when the emails come in, look at them (carefully, on the server, with a text system so as to avoid any kind of possible malware).

And note that while I don't think my latest SpamBlocker installation from my website will change this behavior (it's correct to refuse the email if it's coming to a nonexistent address), it's a later and more sophisticated version of exim.conf than the one I wrote years ago, patched several times and now distributed with DirectAdmin.

Jeff

 

[bblboy54]

So I've found another domain that is sending legitimate emails to me that have the same situation going on (the mail server is receiving an email directed to the server's hostname rather than the domain). This email is actually coming to a different domain on the server as well. In this case I spoke with the person that sent me the email and he actually got a bounce back message specifically saying that [email protected] is invalid but he didn't send it to that non-existant address and he even made the comment that he had no idea what that email address was.

On thing I am wondering is if this is a new type of spam protection that ebay.com and equinix.com are using where it wants to find out if the mailserver is legitimate before sending the actual email? I don't understand why they would do this but I also don't know any other reason why my server would be receiving email for a non-existant address that the sender did not explicitly send an email to.

In any case, what is the best way for me to create the address? DA obviously won't let me add that domain since it is the server's hostname so I'm guessing I'll need to do it in a config file but I'm not exactly sure what the best way to do this would be.

 

[bblboy54]

I actually think I figured this out.... I still don't totally understand why this affected it and why it was only a few domains that had this issue sending me email but it was related to the fact that I had the root of the domains as a CNAME rather than an A record. Everything was configured properly according to the MX records since the MX records specified (and still do) a specific hostname. The only thing I can figure is the mail servers of those couple companies replace the domain with the CNAME listed for domain.com rather than just looking up the MX record like it's supposed to do.

I do appreciate all the input! Thanks!

 

[nobaloney]

Not sure what you mean by root of the domains because by that I'd think you mean:

domain.com CNAME example.net

And you can't have that in a zone file for domain.com.

Jeff