Mail not delivered

[keithr]

A friend who has previously sent me loads of e-mails without problems has now started getting "Mail delivery Failed" messages when attempting to e-mail me. The relevant part of his error message states:

A message that you sent to the following recipient could not be delivered
due to a permanent error. ** The remote server DNSFAIL responded with: **
deleted@fastmail.fm ??:?? This message was created automatically by mail
delivery software on the server avasout07.

Can anyone please explain what is going on here and how to fix it

Thanks
Keith

[petergh]

By the looks of it, the sending mail server was unable to resolve the fastmail.fm domain. The sender should take this up with his email service provider, I think.

[keithr]

Originally Posted by petergh

By the looks of it, the sending mail server was unable to resolve the fastmail.fm domain. The sender should take this up with his email service provider, I think.

Thanks, I have made that suggestion to him.

[keithr]

I contacted plusnet myself. Their response:

As we discussed, the issue seems to be related to MX/DNS, as when the issue was originally raised I tested it and on multiple DNS servers no record was found. However, the records are now there, so hopefully there is no longer an issue.

Rather a mysterious response I thought.

A test today showed that the issue seems to have "gone away"

However they did point out that my fastmail address was failing on verify_email.org, so I tried it myself and got this fail result:

MX record about fastmail.fm exists.
Connection succeeded to in1-smtp.messagingengine.com SMTP.
220 mx3.messagingengine.com ESMTP . No UCE permitted.

> HELO verify-email.org
250 mx3.messagingengine.com

> MAIL FROM: <check@verify-email.org>
=250 2.1.0 Ok

> RCPT TO: <xxxxxx@fastmail.fm>
=451 4.7.1 <xxxxxx@fastmail.fm>: Recipient address rejected: Temporary deferral, try again soon


I tried again a few minutes later and got a verify ok result:

MX record about fastmail.fm exists.
Connection succeeded to in2-smtp.messagingengine.com SMTP.
220 tlxc1.messagingengine.com ESMTP . No UCE permitted.

> HELO verify-email.org
250 tlxc1.messagingengine.com

> MAIL FROM: <check@verify-email.org>
=250 2.1.0 Ok

> RCPT TO: <xxxxxx@fastmail.fm>
=250 2.1.5 Ok

Is this flaky result normal, or is it something to be concerned about

[n5bb]

That deferred acceptance is probably due to greylisting.

Bill

[metathoughts]

I have not been receiving email in my Fastmail inbox since July 9th. I've placed a support ticket request over 24 hours ago and have received no response other than an automated acknowlegement. Today I sent an email to support@fastmail.fm and sales@fastmail.fm about the problem. No response so far. I hope they move on this.

[n5bb]

Originally Posted by metathoughts

I have not been receiving email in my Fastmail inbox since July 9th. I've placed a support ticket request over 24 hours ago and have received no response other than an automated acknowlegement...

Do you have a paid account (Lite, Full, Enhanced, Premier, or Family/Business)? If you have a grandfathered free account from previous years, you will not necessarily receive personal support from Fastmail staff.

Please try the following:

• Can you log into your account with the normal Fastmail web interface? If you can, look at the lower left corner of the Mail screen and you can see how much of your mail storage has been used. If you use up all of your storage quota, you won't be able to receive any additional messages. If your account is not full, then try the next steps.
• While still logged in, send a test email to yourself. What happens?
• Go to http://mailtester.com/testmail.php, enter your email address, and click Check address. You should see all green responses. What happens?
• Are the emails you aren't receiving being sent directly to a Fastmail domain address, a virtual domain (private domain you control), or through an email forwarding service?
• Of course, be sure you have no rules which are blocking or filing the messages unexpectedly, and that they are not in your Spam folder.

Bill

[metathoughts]

Thanks n5bb. I got the problem solved. It was a setting that I accidently changed without noticing. No fault of Fastmail. My bad. Got everything working fine now.

[n5bb]

Originally Posted by metathoughts

Thanks n5bb. I got the problem solved. It was a setting that I accidently changed without noticing. No fault of Fastmail. My bad. Got everything working fine now.

Great! Glad your account is working again.

[paul29]

This is interesting, I've had a few apparent missed deliveries that I'm still investigating. All messages are to my personal domain that Fastmail hosts the MX for, through my Enhanced account. I didn't receive several of FM's own SMS confirmation messages when I tried to confirm an FM account for my mom (my SMS goes to a VOIP number that emails me the message, so it should appear in my Fastmail) and my mom told me she sent me a message from her Yahoo account, but I haven't received it (I'll be able to check into this further later). I'm not sure these are FM problems but I can't rule it out.

[paul29]

Update: one of my "missing" messages was just delivered. My mom sent it to me on July 17 from Yahoo and I just got it today (July 24). Examining the headers shows it got stuck for a whole week at one of the intermediate hops inside the Yahoo network. I wonder how much other email I've sent her or she's sent me, that didn't get delivered. She's not big on computers or email so I just figured she doesn't always answer my messages because I see her in person regularly and she can call me on the phone. I do know that some messages get through in both directions without undue delay. I still want to get her an FM trial account.

TL;DR: Yahoo held at least one of my inbound messages for a whole week inside its own network, so it's not a Fastmail problem. Yahoo just sucks.