On Tue, 21 Jan 1997, Tom Samplonius wrote:
> I always wondered why Sendmail always sends a RSET between each message.
> I guess it is work around bugs in brain-damaged SMTP servers that need to
> forced to forget information regarding the previous message. I suspect
> that Exim 1.59 does this now, too.
Not quite. It only does it if there was some error with the previous
message (e.g. all the recipients were rejected), so it never got to the
DATA bit. This saves a RSET/acknowledge exchange - if things are
working as they should. The change was made in version 0.55 - so it may
be the lack of this in 0.54 (which was an Exim bug) is at the root of
this problem.
> <whine on>
> There are far to many really-bad SMTP senders and receivers out there.
> RFC-821 is only 68 pages, and clearly and simply written (as opposed to
> RFC-822 which is overly complex). RFC-821 has also been out for 14
> years!! I just don't get why so many interoperability problems and
> bad, bad implentations still exist. I still run across that mailers that
> don't accept "MAIL FROM:<>" (which almost always results in lost mail).
> <whine off>
Agreed. The cause of most "<>" errors seems to be erroneous Sendmail
configuration files, since in Sendmail that is where it is handled.
--
Philip Hazel University Computing Service,
ph10@??? New Museums Site, Cambridge CB2 3QG,
P.Hazel@??? England. Phone: +44 1223 334714
