Unable to Telnet into port 25 on CentOS PostFix Server
I'm trying to telnet into port 25 on a CentOS server that runs PostFix to test sending email messages from the server.
When I try to telnet in from another CentOS box on the same network I get the message below:
Unable to connect to remote host: Connection refused
SELinux is disabled and I've opened port 25 in iptables...what else should I be looking at?
Run the following the check if postfix is listening on port 25/tcp:
netstat -plnt |grep :25
You should see a line like:
tcp 0 0 0.0.0.0:25 0.0.0.0:* LISTEN 2460/master
If you don't see such a line, check /etc/postfix/master.cf.
In that file, you should see a line like:
smtp inet n - n - - smtpd
The first column is the port, which postfix derives from /etc/services.
You should look up general documentation on setting up Postfix, so your server doesn't become a spam relay. The CentOS wiki has fairly good documentation in that regard.
Update:
Also, look at http://www.postfix.org/postconf.5.html#inet_interfaces which will describe how to configure Postfix to listen on different network interfaces. The relevant line will be found in /etc/postfix/main.cf.
I edited the file /etc/postfix/main.cf. The parameter to look up was
inet_interfaces = localhost
I changed it to
inet_interfaces = $myhostname, localhost
Restart postfix. The problem was fixed.
I had this problem and found that I needed to do:
# service postfix stop
followed (a bit later) by
# service postfix start
Postfix reload did not seem to close and then re-open the required ports.
I generally only see the Connection Refused message if there is nothing listening. Are you sure you have an SMTP server running on the external IP address? Check with
netstat -tunlp | grep 25
tcp 0 0 127.0.0.1:25 0.0.0.0:* LISTEN 1743/master
Here you can see I'm only running on the loopback interface.
Check your /etc/hosts.allow and /etc/hosts.deny files. Maybe the telnet or the ports are blocked in those?!