SMTP issues in Sugar

[monkeyfish]

I'm not sure if this is a SugarCRM issue or another issue. I can't send emails outside of the network from SugarCRM. I have the SMTP stuff setup and can send fine locally. Would this be a firewall issue, exchange issue or something else? Anyone?

[stevec]

As emails are being delivered locally, it's sounds like an SMTP policy issue.

You mentioned exchange. the first question is whether you have configured sugar to use sendmail or SMTP. If it is sendmail, sugar is sending the email to the local machines email transport agent (possibly sendmail or another such), If this is the case, check the local systems logs.

If it's SMTP, I'm guessing you've configured it so that sugar connects directly via SMTP to the exchange server to pass on the email. If this is the case - and I suspect it is - you've hit a mail-forwarding security issue.

The exchange server is treating the sugracrm server just like any external mail server sending it emails. It will receive emails for local users no problem. However, if it is effectively told to forward the email back out to the outside world, then it refuses assuming it may be being asked to forward spam.

(This was a old method of spamming - less frequents now as mail servers are closed to this by default, ...see, it's blocked you! Spammers would find open relays - mail servers that would accept connections from external servers and allow them to send emails to non-local users and have that relay forward them out on it's behalf).

I digress... Basically, the exchanges server thinks sugar is not park of the local mail system, so it will only let it send mail INTO the local mail domain - and will refuse to relay out for it. To fix it, configure exchange so that it will treat the IP address of the sugar server as trusted and will relay for it.

[monkeyfish]

Thanks for the great answer. I will look at the local Exchange policy and see what is going on there.