How to Talk to Your Hosting Provider When Your Email Cannot Delivered

Posted by leepeng on July 3, 2009

Have you ever encounter the situation which after getting your hosting for a while, you start to notice the email send from your server couldn’t reach your recipient; especially when the email is sent direct from the webserver using sendmail (e.g. mail function of PHP)

I myself is not hosting expert. However, after a few shocks, I somehow figure out some simple mis-configuration that easily happen to hosting engineers while setting up new server.

Two main cause: 1st is the missing of qualified domain name and second is missing of SPF setting.

These two can be observe easily by looking at the email header content in GMail. Try create a simple testmail.php which will send email to your GMail account using PHP’s mail function.

<?php
mail("leepeng@gmail.com", "Test Mail", "Test 123", "From: something@xx.com");
?>

Then open the source / original message of the email.

Here is an example of “Healthy” email
Delivered-To: leepeng79.chen@gmail.com
Received: by 10.142.43.3 with SMTP id q3cs50083wfq;
Tue, 30 Jun 2009 02:03:53 -0700 (PDT)
Received: by 10.114.255.12 with SMTP id c12mr12997276wai.11.1246352633584;
Tue, 30 Jun 2009 02:03:53 -0700 (PDT)
Return-Path: <bounce@organisedmum.com.sg>
Received: from organisedmum.com.sg (organisedmum.com.sg [116.12.50.227])
by mx.google.com with ESMTP id 1si12092283pxi.65.2009.06.30.02.03.52;
Tue, 30 Jun 2009 02:03:52 -0700 (PDT)
Received-SPF: pass (google.com: best guess record for domain of bounce@organisedmum.com.sg designates 116.12.50.227 as permitted sender) client-ip=116.12.50.227;
Authentication-Results: mx.google.com; spf=pass (google.com: best guess record for domain of bounce@organisedmum.com.sg designates 116.12.50.227 as permitted sender) smtp.mail=bounce@organisedmum.com.sg
Received: (qmail 20407 invoked by uid 48); 30 Jun 2009 17:03:51 +0800
Date: 30 Jun 2009 17:03:51 +0800
Message-ID: <20090630090351.20397.qmail@organisedmum.com.sg>
To: leepeng79.chen@gmail.com


Here is an example of “unhealthy” email
Delivered-To: leepeng79.chen@gmail.com
Received: by 10.142.43.3 with SMTP id q3cs126200wfq;
Thu, 2 Jul 2009 00:18:36 -0700 (PDT)
Received: by 10.224.28.130 with SMTP id m2mr10174634qac.52.1246519115111;
Thu, 02 Jul 2009 00:18:35 -0700 (PDT)
Return-Path: <nobody@vm4.kfc>
Received: from vm4.kfc (202-150-217-11.rev.ne.com.sg [202.150.217.11])
by mx.google.com with ESMTP id 15si3872346yxe.130.2009.07.02.00.18.34;
Thu, 02 Jul 2009 00:18:34 -0700 (PDT)
Received-SPF: neutral (google.com: 202.150.217.11 is neither permitted nor denied by best guess record for domain of nobody@vm4.kfc) client-ip=202.150.217.11;
Authentication-Results: mx.google.com; spf=neutral (google.com: 202.150.217.11 is neither permitted nor denied by best guess record for domain of nobody@vm4.kfc) smtp.mail=nobody@vm4.kfc
Received: from nobody by vm4.kfc with local (Exim 4.69)
(envelope-from <nobody@vm4.kfc>)
id 1MMGZG-0005GT-VS
for leepeng79.chen@gmail.com; Thu, 02 Jul 2009 15:18:51 +0800
To: leepeng79.chen@gmail.com

If you observe, you will notice that the “healthy” example has a qualified domain name which associate with the IP address. However the “unhealthy” exmple does not have a qualified domain name. The mis-configure one will either has setting localhost or just the server name in the private network (vm4.kfc for this example)

Second is the “healthy” example can pass GMail’s SPF check but the “unhealthy” one have the mark of neutral. SPF is to help make sure the server is not used for spamming. When GMail said it is neutral, it means GMail don’t know if the server is right or wrong.

My experience is that GMail has been very generous in their antispam as it will accept most of the emails. However, if you notice these 2 mis-configuration, it will be likely the mail would not able to deliver to Hotmail, Yahoo, AOL or some corporate email addresses.

So now you have something to argue with the hosting engineer

The last thing to check is to make sure your server’s IP address is not blacklisted. One common place to check is at www.spamhaus.org

Lee Peng @ Work

Posted by John on July 2, 2009

The Web Smith

Posted by leepeng on June 14, 2009

Visited one of my mother’s friend; who was one of the last blacksmith in Muar, Malaysia.

This is his small warehouse…

The various “customised” tools made by him.

Blacksmith is consider a “sunset” job in Malaysia as many tools are manufactured now adays.
It is a tedious work which require hardship and experiences.
However customisation is sometime still needed to achieved special task or to best suit the user.

In Forecepts, we have not ventured into the area of manufacturing.

We are the Web Smiths, doing customisation, hearing from our customers so to built a solution that best meet their business and personal usability preferences.

New Office Annoucement

Posted by John on June 9, 2009

We are happy to inform that Forecepts have upgraded to a bigger space. Don’t worry, we are still located in the same building, we just moved to another unit #03-01C. Do take note of the change in our unit number for future mail correspondence. We will be happy if you can visit us sometime and see us at our new office.

Engineers vs. Management

Posted by John on

Picked this one from an old email, is this how our web programmers relate with our sales & account managers? Hahaha, interesting food for thought …

A woman in a hot air balloon realized she was lost. She reduced altitude and spotted a man below. She descended a bit more and shouted, “Excuse me, can you help me? I promised a friend I would meet him an hour ago but I don’t know where I am.” WAIT! There is more to read… read on »

Girlfriend 7.0 to Wife 1.0

Posted by John on May 25, 2009

Found this from one of those emails forwarded by my friends, just for laughs …

Last year I upgraded from Girlfriend 7.0 to Wife 1.0. I soon noticed that the new program began unexpected child processing that took up a lot of space and valuable resources. In addition, Wife 1.0 installed itself into all other programs and now monitors all other system activity. Applications such as Poker Night 10.3, Football 5.0, Hunting and Fishing 7.5, and Racing 3.6 no longer run, crashing the system whenever selected.

I can’t seem to keep Wife 1.0 in the background while attempting to run my favorite applications. I’m thinking about going back to Girlfriend 7.0, but the uninstall doesn’t work on Wife 1.0. Please help!

Thanks,
A Troubled User. (KEEP READING)

WAIT! There is more to read… read on »

Email Etiquette

Posted by John on February 22, 2009

We used to have a client who always writes in ALL CAPS in his email requests to us. I wonder if he was too lazy to use the shift key to properly perform sentence caps or he doesn’t know how to de-activate his Caps Lock. It seemed as if he was shouting a command at us. I felt that it was really rude and annoying while he sincerely doesn’t realise it. WAIT! There is more to read… read on »