How do I set up server hostname on a VPS?

[Peekay@]

Plesk 7.5 is the CP for my Webfusion Linux VPS.

A new customer has discovered that enquiries from their website email form are not being received. It appears incoming emails from the form get blocked by their anti-spam filter service.

I use the same form on several sites and no other clients have a problem, so I was wondering if it might be down to me incorrectly setting up the VPS host name?.

There is a field in 'Server Preferences' for 'Full Hostname'. I read that I should enter a fully qualified domain name in this, so I set up a sub-domain for our main domain name and used that, e.g.

server.example.com

In email headers from the web form, this does appear, e.g.

FROM: server.example.com (unknown [212.241.***.***])

or

FROM: 212.241.***.*** (EHLO server.example.com) (212.241.***.***)

My concern is, the IP address 212.241.***.*** resolves to the VPS providers, e.g.

lvps212-241-***-***.vps.webfusion.co.uk.

So... I was wondering, should I:

1) Ask my VPS provider to change the IP address to resolve to 'server.example.com', or
2) Enter 'lvps212-241-***-***.vps.webfusion.co.uk' as the hostname, or
3) Do nothing as it probably has nothing to do with any of this!

Any help from mail server gurus would be much appreciated.

 

[faris]

It would certainly be helpful if the rDNS is the same as the hostname. It doesn't matter which was round you do it.

It certainly won't do any harm that's for sure

Faris.

 

[Peekay@]

Thx for responding faris.

I tried entering the VPS providers name as host but that just triggered SpamAssassin alerts, (including a dynamic IP alert).

I have submitted a request for them to change the entry to match server.example.com

We'll see what happens...

 

[faris]

That's really strange. But then I think some of this stuff is a black art. I think I understand it - all very simple and straightforward - then something happens that I don't understand and doesn't make sense and its back to the drawing board :-(

Faris.