The life of Brian Kenny
Magnet Home - Mail SMTP Issues
18Sep2008 Filed under: General Author: bkennySo I have had magnet in my apartment for quiet some time now. In fairness to them, I think their service is excellent and their customer service is excellent.
Today however I was knocked a little bit. I am on 2 days holidays from work and wanted to check my emails. Of course, finding some I needed/wanted to reply to - noticed that the SMTP server kept rejecting. Telneting to my work servers smtp port didn’t seem to work either. Weird.
I created my own internal SMTP server so I could check the logs a little more closely and got this…
Sep 18 11:04:37 Brian-Kennys-MacBook-Pro postfix/smtp[689]: connect to gmail-smtp-in.l.google.com[74.125.79.27]: Operation timed out (port 25)
So - I called them to find out why my SMTP was blocked. The customer service guy said the reassuring because of Spam etc. We have however setup an SMTP Server for you to use, an internal smtp.magnet.ie server.
I questioned why I couldn’t have mind again, but it wasn’t going to happen. Magnet can now read the mails I relay through that server, annoying. Now I’m not saying that they will, and previous experience has led me to think they are very trustworthy.
Bottom line, I didn’t send out my work emails via it. To much of a risk.
6 Responses to “Magnet Home - Mail SMTP Issues”
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About this blog
General ranting and raving about things that intreset me. Music, computer games, IT and god knows what else.
I am currently working in Page 7 Media as a Systems Manager. You can contact me by emailing brian@bkenny.com
Steve Burke
September 18th, 2008 at 2:00 pm
Aye - had the same problem here with Magnet.
Done the following trick:
iptables -A PREROUTING -t nat -p tcp -d server.com –dport 587 -j DNAT –to server.com:25
bkenny
September 22nd, 2008 at 11:39 pm
That sounds scary and like it’s going to break my shiny new Mac
Steve Burke
September 23rd, 2008 at 9:53 am
Forgot to say: that iptables line would have to be done on a remote mail server, thus you could enter server.com: 587 on your mail client.
Some hosting companies already accept smtp on port 587, e.g. mail.hosting365.com.
bkenny
September 23rd, 2008 at 3:44 pm
What is port 587 and how come Magnet allow it to pass through their firewall and not 25 ?
Nathalie
October 15th, 2008 at 7:45 pm
Ooh, scary indeed. What’s the shiny new mac like? I have a 2-year old MacBook and am saving for a shiny big iMac for my photo work.
Would you recommend Magnet? We have truly woeful NTL (TV signal gets scrambled every time you click on a link. Swear to God.) so are looking to make a switch.
bkenny
October 15th, 2008 at 9:29 pm
@Nathalie I would completely recommend Magnet but bare in mind we live in one of the new apartment blocks where Magnet has “Fibre to the Home” in it. This basically means you get super super fast net access for nothing.
Try to change though, as NTL/UPC are a load a poo and it’s just so much hastle with them. Magnet can only provide the TV/Broadband/Telephone line if you are a fibre to the home customer - keep that in mind.
Love my mac
Check out the new macbook pro’s before you go for that iMac Natalie!