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Outlook Clients Fail to find Mail Host

From Ted Allison on Tue, 18 Jan 2000

Mr. Dennis,

We have recently begun to experience a new strange problem relating to trying to send email through our Linux 2.0.34 box. We have over 30 users that have Outlook 2000 and connect to our Linux box to send and receive email with no problems at all. The settings in Outlook 2000 are to use POP3 to receive email and SMTP to send email.

The problem is this: New users that we added cannot send email as they receive an error message that states that Outlook 2000 cannot find mail.xxxdomain.com. They can receive email with no problems, but all of the sudden new users cannot send email. Existing users have no problems sending or receiving, just new users which is very odd.

Any ideas as to what the problem may be? We would appreciate any help in this matter.

Can they ping mail.xxxdomain.com (actual domain name anonymized)?

The error suggests a problem with the DNS resolving on the new clients. I'd look at that first. Then I'd look at other ways in which these new systems might differ from the existing clients.

Try using the TELNET.EXE client on one of these new system to connect to port 25 of the Linux box (mail.xxxdomain.com). If that works than the problem is purely with your client system and you should call a Microsoft support center.

[ Ted forwarded it to his colleague, Jeff. -- Heather. ]

Jim,

Thanks for the reply as I appreciate it. The problem ended up being that some POPs blocked Port 25 as I did the Telnet test and could not connect to the port.

Thanks again,
Jeff