SMTP Error (-1): Connection to server failed

[Dipak Bhoi]

Hello folks,

One of our client was facing an issue while sending an emails from his VPS. He was receiving below error:

SMTP Error (-1): Connection to server failed

There are multiple possibilities for this error. To resolve this follow below instruction.

1. First check the exim status.

# service exim status
exim dead but subsys locked

If you received this status then restart or start the exim service.

#service exim start

2. If the above steps didn't work then try the following steps.

Sometimes this error may also cause due to a setting in the CSF firewall or another firewall. It might be caused by having the following set:

SMTP_BLOCK = 1
SMTP_ALLOWLOCAL = 0

You would need to change SMTP_ALLOWLOCAL to 1 to enable Webmail to function.

That's all, enjoy !!