[techtalk] qmail, fetchmail, and POP3

[srl]

On Sat, 15 Apr 2000, Jeff Dike wrote:

> >  When I try to telnet to it on 110 from my shell account (this mail
> > account), QPOP answers me. So it's somehow related to the firewall.
> 
> I hate to ask stupid questions, but can you make sure that your shell machine 
> and firewall agree on the IP address for maple.he.net?

they do. both say it's 216.218.214.130. 

> > Could this have something to do with the fact that I'm blocking things
> > like identd from coming through the firewall?
> 
> I just checked this.  I telnetted there and my identd got no probes (I 
> actually stopped my inetd, so the machine got no probes at all).

hmmmmm. interesting. 

> What "connection refused" usually means is that the machine is up and 
> reachable, but there is no service on the port that you're trying to connect 
> to.  That's why I'm wondering whether your two machines are connecting to 
> different servers.  

nope, they're both trying to get to the same IP and port.

> However, through the magic of ipchains, I believe that 
> it's possible for he.net to have things set up to do checks like probe your 
> identd and then fake a "connection refused".  But it doesn't look like that's 
> happening here.

after a long chat on EFNet #linuxhelp, I decide to email the admins and
see if something like that is going on. it happens sometimes for me with
IRC servers, and I wouldn't be surprised if it's happening for POP3. 
I know that others behind my firewall can talk to their own external pop
servers fine.

srl

----
Shane Renee Landrum
slandrum at cs.smith.edu