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VPN stopping email going out

Offline louhaven

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VPN stopping email going out
« on: February 27, 2018, 10:41:46 PM »
Hello,

Firstly, I may have been somewhat 'curt' in prior postings. In the past my personal arrangements have been very stressful, changing all the time. Now they are more stable. In any case, if I have offended anyone, in any way then I sincerely apologize.

Now, onto the problem.

I have a curly problem. SME 9.2, updated to latest patches. Hardware "up to or exceeding specs".

Up until very recently, I found I could send emails from a machine on the local side of my sme with a vpn operational on port 587. The vpn has me popping out in the USA.

For some unknown reason this has now stopped working, or my isp has stopped it working.

My question is if I send and receive email whilst the vpn is 'up' does any of this email go anywhere near the sme server smtp proxy or 'get routed through sme in any way?

I ask this because there don't appear to be any logs on any emails that I send out, but using 'mail log file analysis', 'recipent statistics' I find that a couple of local users:

     sbytes  mess  tries   xdelay   recipient

22542363   551    551   555.17  remote.root@xxxxxxx.xxxxxx.xxx
28585210   695    695   728.07  remote.root@xxxxxxx.xxxxxxx.xxx

has a huge amount of email assigned to them aproximately all of my email in question.

The vpn is routed via gateway/server 'xxxxxxx.xxxxxx.info'. The main sme email lives on xxxxxxx.xxxxxx.org (also gateway/server ), and the third gateway/server is xxxxxxx.xxxxxxx.org

Can someone shed some light on these weird happenings, and, if I need to allow these other gateway/servers access to my email server, as they might be treated as external to the 'local' network, what kind of commands I might need to implelent to allow these other gateways to send email whilst using the vpn.

Best Regards,
Louis

Edit: I think that I have fixed it, but I'm not quite sure I have put all of the entries in the right sections:

I installed Email Whitelist-Blacklist Control, and put the vpn's ip address into all 4 sections in the whitelist. Namely:
qpsmtpd whitelisthosts,
qpsmtpd whitelisthelo,
qpsmtpd whitelistsenders,
spamassassin whitelist_from.

This seems to have cured the problem. Now my question is, do I need my vpn's ip address to be listed in all 4 areas of the whitelist?

I believe it is because the vpn masks everything I do on it to its ip address, and this was stopping me from sending mail out in so far as qpsmtpd is concerned?


« Last Edit: February 28, 2018, 01:23:20 AM by louhaven »
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Regards,

Louis

Offline ReetP

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Re: VPN stopping email going out
« Reply #1 on: March 01, 2018, 12:04:32 PM »
First question is what sort of VPN are you using ??

Connecting from where to where ?
...
1. Read the Manual
2. Read the Wiki
3. Don't ask for support on Unsupported versions of software
4. I have a job, wife, and kids and do this in my spare time. If you want something fixed, please help.

Bugs are easier than you think: http://wiki.contribs.org/Bugzilla_Help

If you love SME and don't want to lose it, join in: http://wiki.contribs.org/Koozali_Foundation

Offline louhaven

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Re: VPN stopping email going out
« Reply #2 on: March 13, 2018, 08:47:11 AM »
First question is what sort of VPN are you using ??

Connecting from where to where ?

Hello!,

I'm using torguard vpn client on windows 7 sp1. Connecting from my home pc to Santa Ana (a big data centre in the usa - near la)

Even though I thought I had fixed it, alas the problem has resurfaced.

I am on a static ip address with torguard, just as I am on a static ip address with 2 of my isps, the third isp is a dynamic ip address.

As I understand it, the vpn grabs all of the traffic and shoots it via the static ip that I have with torguard.

As an aside, I put the static ip address that I was assigned into WBL contrib, and it worked, but now it doesn't appear to be working at all.

I, erm, dont have a bog standard setup here. 3 isps, 3 gateways, 3 fibre connections.

I can go into fuller detail, but to be honest, I'd have to do it privately, as I'm currently being hammered by a couple of twits trying to bust into the smtp email.

All help, no matter what, is appreciated.


----
Regards,

Louis

Offline ReetP

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Re: VPN stopping email going out
« Reply #3 on: March 13, 2018, 09:20:13 PM »
You're going to have to spell out a bit more really.

Not sure posting stuff bar passwords will make much difference. And your mail should be fine if you have some decent passwords. You could install say geoip and fail2ban to block a few as well.

As you are using an unusual setup, and bearing in mind we are blind here, you really need to map stuff out a little more clearly before we can help you.
...
1. Read the Manual
2. Read the Wiki
3. Don't ask for support on Unsupported versions of software
4. I have a job, wife, and kids and do this in my spare time. If you want something fixed, please help.

Bugs are easier than you think: http://wiki.contribs.org/Bugzilla_Help

If you love SME and don't want to lose it, join in: http://wiki.contribs.org/Koozali_Foundation