Comments on: Bizarre Spam Problem?

By: Jarrell B.

Jarrell B. — Sun, 17 Feb 2008 07:03:03 +0000

: I can’t believe it happened. The other day I jogged backward and put on eight pounds!

By: Boris Veldhuijzen van Zanten

Boris Veldhuijzen van Zanten — Wed, 28 Mar 2007 17:36:43 +0000

Hans: yes, Xs4ALL only allows authenticated use of its mailservers to prevent spammers abusing the system.

By: Hans

Hans — Wed, 28 Mar 2007 17:31:27 +0000

Oops, I’ve been a little over-enthusiastic I guess. When I contact the mail server from an XS4ALL connection it still returns “no such user”.

By: Hans

Hans — Wed, 28 Mar 2007 17:29:11 +0000

The xs4all mailserver now responds with a better looking message:
rcpt to: saskia@ipan.nl
553 5.3.0 saskia@ipan.nl… Relaying denied,Authenticate with your username and password first

Seems this problem is solved. Boris, care to fill us in on the details ? :-)

By: mark

mark — Tue, 27 Mar 2007 17:42:23 +0000

indeed, that’s my guess too… that this domain has been hosted by xs4all before and they changed/removed the A-record but not the MX-record… or such ;-)

Can anybody with an xs4all-account (and xs4all smtp-server) try to mail Boris? If that mail is received succesfully by Boris, than there’s even actually a machine actively accepting/rejecting ipan-mail (in the xs4all network). The machine accepting Boris’ mail (and forwarding?) and rejecting Sandra’s mail should then be visible in the mailheaders.

Otherwise I’d say that it’s just the dns-error somewhere at xs4all…

By: Hans

Hans — Tue, 27 Mar 2007 16:55:46 +0000

The MX-records @ns.xs4all.nl are probably there because at one time the ipan.nl domain was hosted at XS4ALL. The rockscom MX-records seem to be reflecting the truth.

I’ve tried sending mail to saskia@ipan.nl through the XS4ALL mail server and it rejected it too. A response like “No such user” implies that the mail server believes that it is authoritative for that domain, which in this case is clearly not correct.

Does XS4ALL have a history with this domain ? I’m tempted to believe that they have hosted email for this domain somewhere in the past and have been reluctant to remove the domain from their mail and DNS server. That would explain the strange MX-records their DNS server returns and the fact that their mail server believes that it’s authoritative for the domain.

By: mark

mark — Tue, 27 Mar 2007 12:48:10 +0000

Yes, all right, but why would xs4all or planet handle the mail? ipan-mail should be sent to ipan.nl. The DNS-entries over at xs4all and planet could be wrong (they maybe think the ipan-mail is handled somewhere else)

I’m no expert in reading domainname and DNS-info, but from what I get, it seems that xs4all thinks ipan-mail is handled by xs4all themselves (but again, I could be wrong… any hoster reading this? ;-))

Query about ipan.nl for record types MX
Trying ipan.nl at server ns.xs4all.nl …
Query done, 4 answers, authoritative status: no error
ipan.nl 86400 IN MX 100 mx3.xs4all.nl
ipan.nl 86400 IN MX 100 mx4.xs4all.nl
ipan.nl 86400 IN MX 100 mx1.xs4all.nl
ipan.nl 86400 IN MX 100 mx2.xs4all.nl
Authority information:
ipan.nl 86400 IN NS ns.xs4all.nl
ipan.nl 86400 IN NS ns2.xs4all.nl

Query about ipan.nl for record types MX
Trying ipan.nl at server ns1.rokscom.net …
Query done, 1 answer, authoritative status: no error
ipan.nl 86400 IN MX 10 mail.ipan.nl
Additional information:
mail.ipan.nl 86400 IN A 213.247.51.100

By: Boris Veldhuijzen van Zanten

Boris Veldhuijzen van Zanten — Tue, 27 Mar 2007 12:21:08 +0000

Mark: the problem is with the xs4all or planet mailserver. Those domains reject the email not ipan.nl or mail.ipan.nl. The only error people get is the error I posted on the article (including the screenshot). It seems that if you telnet to the xs4all server and try to deliver mail that way you also get that error…