Majid Khan wrote:
> Thanks Art,
>
> Now few things I wanted to know but first let me tell you how would I go
> further. I will change the hostname mail.webstarts.info name to
> mail.somethingelse.com and create "A" type with value 72.91.193.6 in my
> domain control panel. In Exim I will change all the occurrences of
> mail.webstarts.info to mail.somethingelse.com and will restart the Exim
> server
>
> For other things that you mentioned how can I check them by myself. Is there
> any tool for that and how can I eliminate those things. I want to know the
> detailed steps to eliminate these problems.
>
> Regards, Majid
Several tools, and it would be *really* nice if more folks would use them:
First is 'host':
host -v mail.webstarts.info
host -v 72.91.193.6
man host for the rest...
next is 'dig':
dig any mail.webstarts.info
dig any ptr mail.webstarts.info
dig @<specific dns server> any [A| MX | PTR] mail.webstarts.info
man dig for the rest...
Less often needed - and NOT one to be used any more than necessary - is 'whois'
whois webstarts.info (don't look for the prefixes - they are not part of a
<domain>.<tld> registraiton)
whois 72.91.193.6
- useful if you need to now who the 'upstream' IP-block holder is, and how the
IP you have been using is allocated/re-allocated.
Sometimes the provider you think is a primary holder is actually a
fourth-level-down reseller. Or the reverse - smaller firm has been 'acquired'
by a larger one consolidating. 'Of interest' especially when the larger firm has
a bad rep and one is unexpectedly blacklisted.
:-(
As to RBL's - there are several websites that will check your <domain>.<tld> OR
IP against multiple lists.
Do some research, *read* before use, then use sparingly and with care.
W/R your DNS entries, if you are not comfortable interpreting the informaiton
returned by 'dig' and such, Google will find you sevral DNS checking sites that
spell out the status of your records. These are limited resources, and most are
not set up to allow checking every five minutes.
Finally - so long as you are using Outlook, you can expect roughly 2 Spam
Assassin points even for a bare 7-bit headered message with an innocuous subject
and clean 7-bit body text.
Worse yet if it is in html or one of Micros**t's proprietary formats, or (as
happens) lies about or breaks MIME encoding or Base-64 encoding.
RT <several> Manuals and/or invest an hour or so of Google'ing and save yourself
back more time than you 'lose' reading.
HTH,
Bill
