On Mon, 16 Apr 2001, Norihisa Washitake wrote:
> I'm using exim on my server, but the time before connection is too
> long. I found this kind of problem in the archive, but it was no
> help. Let me ask here again.
>
> When I use telnet on port 25 through internet (i.e. not locally), I
> have to wait about 30 seconds before the server respondes: "220
> mail.gens.co.jp ESMTP Exim...." On other ports like 22 (SSH), I
> don't have to wait.
I had a very similar problem a while ago. It ended up being a reverse DNS
lookup.
What I had done is added a hostname of a spammer into reject_hosts. On
connection, exim tried to resolve all the hosts there to make sure the
connecting party didn't match.
The spammer's ISP obviously terminated DNS services at some point, after
which the zone didn't resolve, and therefore exim on my server started to
take over a minute to connect.
Check through your reject_hosts to make sure it only contains IPs and no
hostnames.
