Exim 4 update: Problems with relay servers

7 August 2018 by martijn

So you updated to Exim 4. Great. Are you using a relay server like Mailgun, Mailjet, Sendgrid, Mandrill, Mailget Bolt, SendPulse or Mailget SMTP? Chances are that emails send to your own domain are not getting through. You will get something like this (Mailgun example):

Server response: 550 Verification failed for <bounce+a8d97f.f4360d-info=yourdomain.com@yourdomain.com> Sender verify failed

This is due to the fact those email services use a bounce email address to track, well, bounces. And those addresses aren’t users on your Exim box.

The solution:

• Open /etc/exim.conf in your favorite editor
• Search for require verify = sender
• Comment that line (#)

In Direct Admin

• Go To “File Editor” under Admin Tools
• Choose /etc/exim.conf and hit Choose file
• Search for require verify = sender
• Comment that line (#)
• Hit Save

Restart Exim

# For Sysvinit Systems #
# service exim restart
or
# /etc/init.d/exim restart

# For Systemd Systems #
# systemctl restart exim.service
or
# systemctl restart exim
or
# /bin/systemctl restart exim.service