Streamyx SMTP server authentication problem
June 10th, 2008 | by Sean |
The SMTP AUTH settings in this post have been updated in a later article.
It has been a busy few days. I’d noticed a couple of funny messages in the maillog generated by our sendmail daemon, but put them to the back of my mind. Here’s an example:
Jun 10 00:29:16 box0043 sm-mta[9729]: m59GTFu0009727: to=<someone@somewhere.com>, ctladdr=<someone@domain.com> (1000/100), delay=00:00:01, xdelay=00:00:01, mailer=relay, pri=120489, relay=smtp.streamyx.com. [202.188.0.212], dsn=5.7.1, stat=Service unavailable
Jun 10 00:29:16 box0043 sm-mta[9729]: m59GTFu0009727: m59GTGu0009729: DSN: Service unavailable
In retrospect, the log entries don’t seem so benign. In actual fact, the emails were not delivered. DSN is a Delivery Service Notification, which can be used to notify a sender by email when there’s a problem. It seems I had two problems on my mail server setup, as I didn’t get any email notifications of the failures. Most of the outgoing emails were sent by a PHP program running on our webserver, so may have been sent to the webserver’s non-interactive user.
The cause of this problem might have been harder to find, if it were not for a dim recollection of seeing a message somewhere that TM were planning to block mail from users who had never changed their default Streamyx password. I’m one of those people, and when I saw the recent message thought once again “Oh, I must get round to doing that”.
Well it seems they must have put their plan into action. To test my suspicion, I tried to log in to my mail account at http://webmail.tm.net.my – no joy. You can change a Streamyx password at the TM Billing site. Once I’d done that, webmail login worked just fine, I reset my ADSL router after changing the Streamyx password, and updated my sendmail auth file.
To make sure sendmail is logging in to the Streamyx SMTP proxy, you must edit your auth/client-info file and make sure the AuthInfo line is up to date:
AuthInfo:smtp.streamyx.com "U:USERNAME@streamyx.com" "I:USERNAME@streamyx.com" "P:PASSWORD"
Then execute the following commands to compile your sendmail settings:
makemap hash client-info < client-info
/etc/rc.d/rc.sendmail restart
That’s it! I may have imagined the threat from TM regarding default passwords and the SMTP proxy, but I don’t think I did. If you can track down that message, I’d love to see it again – it bothers me that it has disappeared.
Update: thanks to mylinear at WebmasterMalaysia.com, who pointed out that it’s the message on the TM Helpline (1300-88-9515)! Here she is:
3 Responses to “Streamyx SMTP server authentication problem”
By Pin on Jun 10, 2008 | Reply
That is pretty paintful! TM decision to block SMTP on port 25 not just causing problem to users using email clients like Outlook Express, but also Webmail form using their SMTP.
I would suggest not to use TM SMTP, as it would make your script not portable the moment it goes to another data centre not hosted by TM.
By Sean on Jun 11, 2008 | Reply
I’m wondering why they neither sent email nor placed an announcement on the streamyx.com or tm.net.my pages.
Interesting caution about scripts – it doesn’t apply to my sites, as they use local sendmail, which is configured to forward mail via smtp.streamyx.com. If I moved the sites, the scripts would still use a local MTA (Mail Transfer Agent).