Domain Postmaster

Problem reported by Grey - 8/19/2015 at 2:28 AM

Resolved

With the 08/13/2015 release of SmarterMail 14, email to postmaster@domain is sent to the primary domain administrator if a postmaster account is not created. Unfortunately, we now know this bypasses existing (and future) aliases for postmaster. We had previously installed aliases for postmaster@ and abuse@ for all of our domains. These aliases forwarded to our server postmaster/abuse accounts, rather than the domain administrator. It appears a work-around would be to create a postmaster mailbox then forward the mailbox to the server postmaster address. However, this is a more convoluted resolution than our historical use of aliases. There is already a proposal for global abuse and postmaster accounts, which we support. However, this "improvement" in the last release seems more of one step forward, one step back.

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Bruce Barnes Replied

8/19/2015 at 7:19 AM

There are a couple of places you need to look:

1. Make certain you have created the POSTMASTER account for SmarterMail. This is done in the SETTINGS, GENERAL SETTINGS, POSTMASTER box:

Then you need to add either a POSTMASTER ACCOUNT, or POSTMASTER ALIAS in EVERY hosted domain.

While some of your hosted clients may want to be the postmaster and abuse contacts for their domains, remember, that YOU, as the SmarterMail SERVER OPERATOR, are 100% responsible for all of the content that passes through your server and anything which is sent to either the POSTMASTER or ABUSE account MUST, PER IETF mandates, be responded to by a live person.

 * POSTMASTER - pointing to a VALID E-MAIL ADDRESS which you check and respond to when someone sends to POSTMASTER@DOMAIN.TLD
PER RFC822 6.3, RFC1123 5.2.7, and RFC2821 4.5.1: Mailservers are required  to have a valid postmaster address that is accepting mail.

- and;

 * ABUSE - pointing to a VALID E-MAIL ADDRESS which you check and respond to when someone sends to ABUSE@DOMAIN.TLD.
PER: RFC2142 Section 2. Mailservers are required by to have a valid abuse address that is accepting mail.

So, unless you absolutely trust your hosted client, you will want to make certain that both the POSTMASTER and ALIAS accounts/aliases for each of your hosted domains are forwarded an account that you, or someone with the authority to act on your behalf, will respond to.

Failure to do so WILL amount to your mail being non-delivered to YAHOO!, COMCAST, OUTLOOK.COM, AOL, and many other large providers. They don't play games any more: if they e-mail POSTMASTER@ or ABUSE@, they expect a response. If you don't respond, they either severely limit, or block, e-mail from the domain which does not respond.

The accounts/aliases, for ABUSE and POSTMASTER will also be required as points of contact when you setup the, now required, FEEDBACK LOOPS for the following providers:

AOL	Comcast/TWC	Excite/Bluetie	MSN Junk Mail Program	United Online
Roadrunner	Usa.net	Yahoo!	Earthlink	Outblaze (mail.com)
Cox	Rackspace	Tucows/OpenSRS	Synacor	Zoho
Fastmail	Terra

An excellent resource, with live links to each of the listed providers who require feedback loops, is located on UNLOCKTHEINBOX.COM at: http://www.unlocktheinbox.com/members/feedbackloops/# (requires a subscription to access this area.)

Note that GOOGLE does NOT have feedback loops, but, if messages are routinely rejected by GOOGLE, they will attempt to send messages to POSTMASTER@ and/or ABUSE@ and you'll need to check the links within those messages to respond and have your domain/IP address added back to the "allowed to send to GOOGLE" list.

For more information on POSTMASTER and ABUSE accounts, see my KB article, Why Am I Having Problems Getting My E-Mail Delivered.

Bruce Barnes ChicagoNetTech Inc brucecnt@comcast.net Phonr: (773) 491-9019 Phone: (224) 444-0169 E-Mail and DNS Security Specialist Network Security Specialist Customer Service Portal: https://portal.chicagonettech.com Website: https://www.ChicagoNetTech.com Security Blog: http://networkbastion.blogspot.com/ Web and E-Mail Hosting, E-Mail Security and Consulting

Grey Replied

8/19/2015 at 11:21 AM

Bruce, thanks for the reply. Unfortunately, that does not really help.

We have always required all of our hosted domains to alias their postmaster and abuse addresses directly to us (we set it up initially and require them to keep that configuration). This worked fine up until the 8/13 release (14.2.5703) when "Changed: Messages sent over SMTP to postmaster@[domain] will now deliver to the primary domain admin and the global postmaster address if a postmaster account has not been created for the target domain."

I discovered this last night when I added a new domain and tested the alias. Before, this worked great. Now, SM always delivers mail addressed to postmaster@domain to the primary domain admin. It never sends it to the server postmaster mailbox nor does it send to the alias postmaster address we created under the domain. I deleted the alias and sent another test and get the same results. I tried from an outside mail account to see if this was just an internal mail issue but got the same result. I tried another (existing) domain and got the same results. Finally, I created a postmaster mailbox under the account and it successfully intercepts the postmaster@domain mail. However, forwarding of that mail to the server postmaster mailbox failed.

The bottom line -- the server postmaster mailbox does not get a copy of the message and creating an alias also does not work. Creating a postmaster mailbox works but forwarding does not.

In the end, we do not necessarily want the domain admin getting ANY postmaster messages and would prefer this was a configuration option that could be overridden by a specific alias being created to distribute the postmaster email. I also do not like the idea of having to create either a primary domain admin or postmaster mailbox to intercept these messages.

At this moment, we are blind to any incoming postmaster email on all of our hosted domains.

Bruce Barnes Replied

8/19/2015 at 1:34 PM

Sounds like you're doing everything the right way, Grey.

Since the handling of postmaster@ e-mail, based on what you are saying, appears to have changed, I would:

create a postmaster@ account in each domain, as the primary domain postmaster
forward all messages to that account to the primary postmaster account: yours
open a ticket with SmarterTools and report this as a bug.

Employee Replied

8/20/2015 at 10:08 AM

Employee Post

Grey, I was able to replicate the postmaster delivery situation that you described. We were not properly handling aliases (and even mailing lists) addressed to postmaster correctly. That has been fixed and will be available in the next minor release. If you would like a custom build with the fix in place beforehand, please add a comment to this post.

Bruce Barnes Replied

8/20/2015 at 10:39 AM

Robert: Great response time on this important issue. Could I get a link to that special build, please? Thanks,

Employee Replied

8/20/2015 at 11:00 AM

Employee Post

Bruce, I have created a ticket with you with the link included.

Bruce Barnes Replied

8/20/2015 at 11:51 AM

Thanks - verified working with postmaster alias.

Grey Replied

8/20/2015 at 1:03 PM

Robert, thanks for the quick resolution. I'm glad it wasn't just me. I'd love to have the custom build. Bruce, thanks for checking the update and verifying!

Employee Replied

8/20/2015 at 1:13 PM

Employee Post

Grey, I have created a ticket with you with the link included.

Grey Replied

8/20/2015 at 1:43 PM

I can also confirm this resolves the issue. Postmaster aliases now correctly route emails and bypass sending to the primary domain admin. Thanks!

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