Mail and Reverse DNS

Question

Hi,

I have acooke.org hosted at webfaction. I don't have the name mail.acooke.org defined. I send email via Webfaction's SMTP server. I just had an email bounced with the message:

<xxx@example.com>: host mail.example.com[xx.xx.xx.xx] said: 554 "Refused. You have
no reverse DNS entry. Contact abuse@suresupport.com for details." (in reply to
RCPT TO command)

I've searched around, but I don't fully understand what address is being looked up, and when. Also, this is the first time (to my knowledge) that this has happened.

Can anyone explain what I need to do to avoid this? I searched the online docs here and didn't find anything, while a more general search just left me confused. In particular, when I type "host acooke.org" I see three mail servers listed (at webfaction) all of which seem to have reverse DNS configured:

> host acooke.org
acooke.org has address 174.120.107.200
acooke.org mail is handled by 10 mx8.webfaction.com.
acooke.org mail is handled by 10 mx9.webfaction.com.
acooke.org mail is handled by 10 mx7.webfaction.com.
> host mx8.webfaction.com
mx8.webfaction.com has address 174.133.21.100
mx8.webfaction.com mail is handled by 10 mx8.webfaction.com.
> host 174.133.21.100
100.21.133.174.in-addr.arpa domain name pointer mail8.webfaction.com.
> host mx9.webfaction.com
mx9.webfaction.com has address 67.228.154.2
mx9.webfaction.com mail is handled by 10 mx9.webfaction.com.
> host 67.228.154.2
2.154.228.67.in-addr.arpa domain name pointer mail9.webfaction.com.
> host mx7.webfaction.com
mx7.webfaction.com has address 174.133.156.178
mx7.webfaction.com mail is handled by 10 mx7.webfaction.com.
> host 174.133.156.178
178.156.133.174.in-addr.arpa domain name pointer mail7.webfaction.com.

(it's not the difference between "mx..." and "mail..." is it?)

Any help appreciated, Andrew

Accepted Answer

Please send us a support ticket with the message and full e-mail headers and we can track it in the system. There is nothing wrong with your MX records,

$ dig mx acooke.org

; <<>> DiG 9.7.3 <<>> mx acooke.org
;; global options: +cmd
;; Got answer:
;; ->>HEADER<<- opcode: QUERY, status: NOERROR, id: 28793
;; flags: qr rd ra; QUERY: 1, ANSWER: 3, AUTHORITY: 4, ADDITIONAL: 0

;; QUESTION SECTION:
;acooke.org.            IN  MX

;; ANSWER SECTION:
acooke.org.     3600    IN  MX  10 mx9.webfaction.com.
acooke.org.     3600    IN  MX  10 mx7.webfaction.com.
acooke.org.     3600    IN  MX  10 mx8.webfaction.com.

;; AUTHORITY SECTION:
acooke.org.     86400   IN  NS  ns3.webfaction.com.
acooke.org.     86400   IN  NS  ns4.webfaction.com.
acooke.org.     86400   IN  NS  ns1.webfaction.com.
acooke.org.     86400   IN  NS  ns2.webfaction.com.

;; Query time: 1704 msec
;; SERVER: 192.168.1.1#53(192.168.1.1)
;; WHEN: Sun Sep  4 17:53:14 2011
;; MSG SIZE  rcvd: 174

The mx servers are also mailbox servers, and so running host like that will produce those results, but it is nothing out of the ordinary.

the warning itself looks like it is not coming from our servers, since it asks you to "Contact abuse@suresupport.com for details." but having the full header info we can tell you more.

Mail and Reverse DNS

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