It takes about 15-30 seconds just to connect to my mailserver to send email. I'm using H-Sphere control panel, RedHat 7.2 and qmail on this box. I've tested the mail sending using Eudora and Outlook Express.

Does anyone know what might have cause this slowness and how to fix it?

The problem worse before, checking/receiving mails took a few minutes. My host said that's a reverse dns problem and when they fixed it, checking mails are lightning fast now as it should be. It's just sending mails that are still slow now.

The mail server is certainly checking auth (identd). You can reset port 113 on your gateway/firewall.

What gateway/firewall did you mean? I don't use any firewall software (except those included built-in on XP) and my server doesn't use any gateway/firewall either.

Originally posted by twrs
What gateway/firewall did you mean? I don't use any firewall software (except those included built-in on XP) and my server doesn't use any gateway/firewall either.

Can you try sending email from another OS? Without firewall.

I just tried to disable my XP firewall and the mail sending is running fast, so that must be the culprit.

What makes me wondering is that why this doesn't affect my other mails? All the other mails (on different hosts) that I have are running fast regardless whether I enable/disable XP firewall?

Is there any setting on my server configuration that determine this behavior? I'm using Redhat 7.2 and qmail.

You can either deactivate ident/auth lookup in the qmail config (recommended) or try to reset port 113 in XP.


http://www.geocrawler.com/mail/msg.php3?msg_id=2933672&list=513

Originally posted by taz0
You can either deactivate ident/auth lookup in the qmail config (recommended) or try to reset port 113 in XP.

http://www.geocrawler.com/mail/msg.php3?msg_id=2933672&list=513

Thanks for the tips. I'm still a newbie so if you don't mind, could you please tell me exactly what commands should I type to start tcpserver with the -R flag to deactivate ident/auth lookup in qmail? And is there any side effect by doing so?

And how do I reset port 113 in XP?

Sorry for asking too much, but I really don't have any idea of how to do so... :(

It is not a good idea to disable ident checking. It would make things like tracing spammer much harder. Second, it looks like your client machine is the problem, not your mail server. So, the right thing to do is to fix your client machine, not the server.

Originally posted by priyadi
It is not a good idea to disable ident checking. It would make things like tracing spammer much harder. Second, it looks like your client machine is the problem, not your mail server. So, the right thing to do is to fix your client machine, not the server.

If my XP machine is the cause, how could I access and send email from my other mails (on different hosts) very fast? This slow mail sending is only affecting the mailserver on this particular server.