Issue External SMTP Server (MSMTP)

[FishWater]

Hello!
I use Plesk in a vps environment (Lightsail) and I have uninstalled the mailserver that comes along with Plesk because all my emails are managed with an external provider (MXRoute). But I needed the notification emails and forget password emails to go out from Plesk. so I followed this guide to just to use the External SMTP Server (MSMTP) to do that. Unfortunately this option is not working yet.



Steps I've taken so far:

1. I have enabled SMTP port 25 & 465 in my lightsail account.

2. In my MXRoute (external email provider) I added
- a new domain (my plesk default server url which I use to log into plesk) and
- created a noreply email account.


3. After that added the noreply email account at plesk’s External SMTP Server Settings and enabled all the check boxes.


After doing all that, I tried to do a 'forgot password' for one of the sites hosted in my plesk environment but that did not generate any email gave me the following error, which I presume this is not set up correctly.


Now, How do I verify if this is working? Is there anything else I need to do or check? Any help will be much appreciated.

 

[Monty]

My first guess would be that maybe outgoing connections to port 25 of your external SMTP servers are blocked, maybe be your hosting provider.

Are you able to connect to port 25 of your SMTP Server? What's the result of:
# telnet arrow.mxrouting.net 25

And what do you see in /var/log/plesk/panel.log ?

 

[FishWater]

Are you able to connect to port 25 of your SMTP Server? What's the result of:
# telnet arrow.mxrouting.net 25

hi, I thought I would not get any response here so thank you so much for replying. Well I had to google up to learnt about telnet and learnt something new.

this is the response I got, does this mean it's okay?

 

[Monty]

It looks like you did that from your own computer (Windows telnet), but you should perform this test from your Plesk server to find out whether you're able to connect to that remote SMTP server or not.

 

[FishWater]

oh! right, so I sent the command you gave through the browser-based SSH client in the lightsail control panel and this is what I got. Looks like it works for port 465.

I'm not sure how to do the following, where can I find this? preferably from the plesk environment rather than CLI command, it makes me a little nervous to use it

And what do you see in /var/log/plesk/panel.log ?

 

[Monty]

So you see: Outgoing connections to port 25 of arrow.mxrouting.net are blocked, either by your server or by your hosting company.

Check with your SMTP server provider if you can use port 465 or 587.

 

[weltonw]

For MXRoute, you want to authenticate over 465

 

[FishWater]

So you see: Outgoing connections to port 25 of arrow.mxrouting.net are blocked, either by your server or by your hosting company.

Check with your SMTP server provider if you can use port 465 or 587.

Yeah I tried 465 and it worked. It's there in the screen grab. Is there anyway I can generate a test notification from plesk or test if the details I've filled up are correct?

 

[FishWater]

For MXRoute, you want to authenticate over 465

yep that's what I used too

 

[weltonw]

Just send an email from a domain

 

[FishWater]

Just send an email from a domain

Emails from domains work because they're managed by MXRoute and nothing to do with plesk (as mentioned at the beginning of this thread, the whole mailserver is uninstalled except for the MSMTP component. The MSMTP is solely for plesk to send notification emails and route forget password emails for sites using external smtp.

Or did you mean something else?

 

[weltonw]

Oh I see. Sorry. It depends on what notifications you have configured. Just trigger one of those. There's no way to have plesk send a test email AFAIK

 

[FishWater]

Oh I see. Sorry. It depends on what notifications you have configured. Just trigger one of those. There's no way to have plesk send a test email AFAIK

no problem and thanks for even replying. yep did that too by way of initiating a 'forgot password' for a site which returns a gateway timeout. so not sure where exactly is the issue.

 

[weltonw]

It sounds like it got stuck trying to send the email. I'd check your relay logs and Plesk error logs

 

[FishWater]

It sounds like it got stuck trying to send the email. I'd check your relay logs and Plesk error logs

okay just did a forgot password again to see what's appearing in the log and this is what I got