thank you again Wietse. It's an honor to hear from the creator of postfix. This problem is now solved and I have learned a lesson about how to deal with this situation.
best! tim ----- Original Message ----- From: "Tim Dunphy" <bluethu...@jokefire.com> To: "Postfix users" <postfix-users@postfix.org> Sent: Friday, November 18, 2011 10:26:24 AM Subject: Re: mail defered on local network Thank you Wietse, I appreciate your reply. Here's what I've found. From the problem host: [monitor03:myuser:~]$telnet alt4.gmail-smtp-in.l.google.com Trying 74.125.39.26... telnet: connect to address 74.125.39.26: Connection refused From the EC2 instance: [root@puppet ~]# telnet alt4.gmail-smtp-in.l.google.com 25 Trying 74.125.43.27... Connected to alt4.gmail-smtp-in.l.google.com (74.125.43.27). Escape character is '^]'. 220 mx.google.com ESMTP uh9si876412bkb.108 HELO puppet 250 mx.google.com at your service So I think I understand your point that this is not a matter of correcting a configuration error in postfix, but rather it seems that port 25 outbound is blocked on this network. Thanks, TIm ----- Original Message ----- From: "Wietse Venema" <wie...@porcupine.org> To: "Postfix users" <postfix-users@postfix.org> Sent: Friday, November 18, 2011 8:33:29 AM Subject: Re: mail defered on local network Tim Dunphy: > [monitor03:root:/etc/postfix]#telnet localhost 25 ... > [root@cloud postfix]# telnet localhost 25 The problem is with DELIVERING mail not receiving it. Therefore, try to telnet to the DESTINATION, not the Postfix MTA. Wietse