Thread: How to change CPanel mail server IP address?

Quite few times your server's main/shared IP address may get black listed by most of RBLs due to x reasons.

In such situations, it would be very difficult to receive/send some important emails due to this black list.

In such situation a quick solution is to route the emails through a secondary IP address on the same server which is not black listed under those RBLs.

The mail server on cpanel i.e exim allows you to change the default IP address used by the mail server so that you would be able to route all emails through this new secondary IP address.

Here are the step by step instructions for you to configure your exim mail server to use new IP address.

Step 1 : Shutdown the exim service.
# service exim stop or /etc/init.d/exim stop

Step 2 : Edit your exim configuration file.
# vi /etc/exim.conf

Step 3: go to "remote_smtp" section under "TRANSPORTS CONFIGURATION".
By default it would look like below:
Quote:
remote_smtp:
driver = smtp
interface = ${if exists {/etc/mailips}{${lookup{$sender_address_domain}lsearch{/etc/mailips}{$value}{}}}{}}
helo_data = ${if exists {/etc/mailhelo}{${lookup{$sender_address_domain}lsearch{/etc/mailhelo}{$value}{$primary_hostname}}}{$primary_ho stname}}

Step 4 : Remove or comment line containing "interface" and "helo_data" and add new "interface" to match with that of your new IP address. It should look like as follows:
Quote:
remote_smtp:
driver = smtp
interface = 12.12.12.12 # Your IP address.

Step 5 : Save your changes and exit out from your exim configuration file.

Note : Dont forget to set read only attributes on exim configuration file, so that it wont get reset to default automatically.

You can do it using following command:
# chattr +aui /etc/exim.conf

Step 6 : start exim service on your server.
# service exim restart or /etc/init.d/exim restart

Step 7 : Make sure to set reverse DNS for this new IP address to point a valid FQDN.

Step 8 : Try sending a test email and you will find that, it was sent using this new IP address configured under your exim configuration.

You can verify it by checking the header of new email under exim's log file i.e /var/log/exim_mainlog

You should remove the entire line which says "helo_data".

remote_smtp:
driver = smtp
interface = x.x.x.x - Your IP address
{${lookup{$sender_address_domain}lsearch{/etc/mailips}{$value}{}}}{}} - > Remove this
helo_data = x.x.x.x - Remove this too

should be like this:
remote_smtp:
driver = smtp
interface = x.x.x.x #your ip address