Ok, Ive been digging through google for several day's now and i finally threw in the towel and got an account here.

I set up debian 5 on a vm on one of my server's at home. Followed the tutorial here >> http://www.debianadmin.com/debian-ma...rrel-mail.html . Right after i did the initial install just as the tutorial says, i was able to recieve mail and collect it via imap on outlook or thunderbird. Finished the tutorial, everything was great. Well i live out in the country deep in the woods on a satellite connection, and that should be enough said so i picked up a cheap vps.

Did the tutorial just the same, except after the initial install i still couln't receive mail. dns mx records were set up the same, only thing different was i was using 32bit deb. 5 at home and 64bit deb. 5 on the vps. Did it over and over finally decided to finish setting up sasl and squirellmail and now i can send email (of course) now that sasl is finished. still cant receive. I used pingability.com to test the mx record's and the only error that came back was that the server gave it relay access denied. Here is the exact error from returned mail from another address i have. <support@arealreason.com>:
host messiah.arealreason.com[173.212.225.60] said:
554 5.7.1 <support@arealreason.com>: Relay access denied (in reply to RCPT
TO command).

So i tried to telnet arealreason.com 25, that let me in, i typed ehlo arealreason.com, put the sender address and finally when i got to rcpt to it would'nt take the address support@arealreason.com. remember i can send email from this address it just won't recieve. so i checked netstat -l it shows that smtp is listening on all addresses. i can send via outlook or squirelmail doesn't matter which, but it works. Any insight would be greatly apprecated.

Thanks in advance. -Rick

ok <UPDATE>

I ssh'd into the server and telnet'd localhost that way, went through the ehlo and all the other commands. after finishing it said message qued and says ok.

Checked the email, still nothing, its just that if i do it from ssh on the vps it goes past rcpt to. and if i send it from anywhere else i get the returned mail error posted above.

Now i just checked the email that i said that i sent it from when i telnet'd localhost via ssh. And i found this error waiting in that account's mailbox (this account isn't affiliated with the server i'm posting about im just assuming that since i put this address in the <mail from> command after ehlo it just looped back somehow) This is what it said:

" The mail system

<support@arealreason.com>: mail for arealreason.com loops back to myself"

Thanks in advance, Rick

What's in the mydestination parameter in Postfix' main.cf? Have you added arealreason.com as a valid destination domain there?
From the error message it sounds like Postfix is trying to send mail to xxx@arealreason.com, instead of accepting mail destined for this domain.

1 members found this post helpful.

Wow that's great, i looked in my destinations and found, mail.arealreason.com, messiah.arealreason.com <the hostname> , and localhost.arealreason.com, i added arealreason.com, that did the trick. THANKS SO MUCH!

You're welcome.
Always nice to know if the tips helps.

If you can guide me how to give you a thanks for your record, you totally deserve it!

It's the thumbs up icon that does it.