Lithium smtp problems, emails from forum not been delivered

[#1]

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@chrcoluk wrote:
As a side note I am about to turn off email notifications, as this Lithium forum very annoyingly sends an email for each reply instead of just for first new reply.

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I agree, switched it off yesterday.

M

[#2]

I switched mine off too ,  just because they are a pain in the rear the amount you recived

[#3]

From about 8 password reset requests I sent I only received 2 and neither of those worked on the site. All seems a bit fundamental. I run my own hosting servers and no other emails even tried to be delivered from Lithium servers, unless they have blacklisted themselves on RBL's. I gave up and created a new account instead as it was too much of a headache as their systems are clearly broken.

BTW, my eyes are bleeding thanks to the layout and avatars on the desktop - fine on a mobile not so nice otherwise

[#4]

.... and I'm in.

@chrcoluk  correctly diagnosed the problem - its something to do with grey listing and could affect some hosting companies.    My web hosts have fixed it for me, and although Im not with TSO, the fix should hopefully soon be applied there too. 

IIUI properly* then :-

Due to a combination of factors, smtp2.Lithium.com will find itself on a grey-list with some hosts.

1) Lack of DKIM signature (to prove they are sending legit mail from that domain - they should be doing this).
2) They arent using TLS (which isnt too important)

those 2 factors make some mail servers suspicious so they do some type of callback to ensure that the sender is legitimate, which is where the larger problem begins.

3) The Lithium server never responds - it eventually just times out and you get lots of these

2016-04-11 10:02:15 SMTP connection from smtp2.Lithium.com [46.19.168.11]:51745 lost 2016-04-11 10:04:22 SMTP connection from [46.19.168.11]:60148 (TCP/IP connection count = 1) 2016-04-11 10:04:34 SMTP connection from smtp2.Lithium.com [46.19.168.11]:60148 lost 2016-04-11 10:12:04 SMTP connection from [46.19.168.11]:51720 (TCP/IP connection count = 1)

In the meantime, your email is being put on a queue waiting for some response from Lithium.

The weird thing is sometimes it does respond, but for some odd reason Ive noticed it will be like 8hrs, or 20hrs (multiple of 4 practically to the minute) but it also looks like if it hasnt responded after 24hrs then mail is dropped.

Chrys said a couple of days ago

Some mail servers do a callback to make sure sender is legit, the Lithium smtp server doesnt have port 25 open.  I think this is a more likely reason than the TLS problem.

.ssh # telnet smtp2.Lithium.com 25
Trying 46.19.168.11...
telnet: connect to address 46.19.168.11: Connection refused
telnet: Unable to connect to remote host

*any misunderstanding on how it works is likely to be mine.

[#5]

Thanks for that @kitz. Point 3 definitely isn't going to be helping.

@chrcoluk wrote:

@bobpullen wrote:

Lack of TLS transport is an acknowledged 'problem'. If anyone is experiencing email delays first hand then I'd appreciate them private messaging me with the headers of any delayed messages they've received.

yeah Bob but this is specific to Lithium smtp servers, not the existing issue reported on plusnet smtp servers.

I was referring to the Lithium servers