Basically;
1. Don't use Nemesis if you can help it (AFAIK it is used and developed by Schlund & Partner - 1&1). I have had issues with 1&1's Nemesis server before as Nemesis doesn't support Linux style linebreaks (LF). So if the sent email message body contains them it ignores the linebreaks and throws a "500 line limit exceeded" error as the message body can then contain too many characters per line (if it's a long email). Your issue may be related to this or you might have hit another bug (or feature) with "Nemesis".
2. Yes, use the Postfix smarthost if you can. You can use any domain you like as your sending address when sending through a smarthost - it all depends on the smarthost provider's policy. Here in UK for instance BT won't let you email through their smtp servers with a domain not approved by them. So you need to call them & provide proof of ID & that you own the domain in question & then they will let you relay. It may be the same with smtp.free.fr - the only way to find out is to contact them & ask. Most providers allow you to relay with any email address as long as you are trusted in some way - i.e. you authenticate first or you are on one of their trusted networks.
Hope that helps.
Mike.
-----Original Message-----
From: exim-users-bounces+mike=ridgers.net@??? [
mailto:exim-users-bounces+mike=ridgers.net@exim.org] On Behalf Of Andreas Reuleaux
Sent: 14 January 2013 05:04
To: exim-users@???
Subject: [exim] Could it be that my mail was filtered as spam? - seeking some advice
I am on debian wheezy using exim in a smarthost configuration.
For years my smart host was smpt.web.de and everything worked smoothly. Choosing smtp.web.de as my smart host seemed only natural given my web.de email address.
I have moved to France meanwhile, but kept my German web.de email address and I really want to stick with it, after all that's the address by which everyone knows me. No problem so far: I can reach my smtp.web.de smart host from France as well.
Then I discovered about a year ago, that some important emails of mine were silently discarded, i. e. smpt.web.de accepted them just fine, but somehow on their way to their destination they where lost without giving me any "delivery failed" message.
Telnetting smtp.web.de revealed that it's running a "Nemesis ESMTP"
server
$ telnet smtp.web.de 587
Trying 213.165.67.108...
Connected to smtp.web.de.
Escape character is '^]'.
220 web.de (mrweb002) Nemesis ESMTP Service ready
I don't really know much about this Nemesis server, and maybe I am not giving it the justice it deserves, but I had the idea of trying out my French telephone operator Free's smtp server smtp.free.fr instead, as it is running Postfix, a well know open source server, and I generally have more confidence in open source systems. Also I heard that the guys at free.fr are smart, and I figured they would make an effort to keep their system up to date, perhaps more so than the web.de guys.
$ telnet smtp.free.fr 587
Trying 212.27.48.4...
Connected to smtp.free.fr.
Escape character is '^]'.
220 smtp1-g21.free.fr ESMTP Postfix
I could/can use this smtp.free.fr server, as I a got with my free.fr subscription also a free.fr email account, which I don't use however, as I prefer to continue using my web.de address (as explained above).
So what I am currently doing, is sending emails with my @web.de sender address through my smtp.free.fr smart host.
This seems to work - not always, though.
I experienced not to long ago the same issues as with my web.de smart
host: some emails of mine were silently discarded. Another problem was that some emails took ages to arrive, but they finally arrived at least.
I am not 100% sure at this point, if this was a temporary problem of free.fr which is fixed by now. - Of course I can just continue using smtp.free.fr and see if it works.
My other suspicion - and my real question - is this: maybe some email servers on the Internet inspect my emails and sort them out as spam as my sender address doesn't match my smarthost.
To be clear: smtp.free.fr *does* accept my @web.de emails, this sorting out / discarding must happen somewhere later, either within free.fr without telling me, or later on the way to their destination.
Should I expected my emails to arrive at its final destination once smtp.free.fr has accepted them (and it's free.fr's responsibility to convince other servers that it's not spam), or is my configuration just so obviously lousy, that other smtp servers will consider my mail as spam.
Can I configure my exim maybe to demand some additional status information, say some notification from every hop my email takes?
Any advice is welcome.
-Andreas
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