[ On Fri, April 18, 1997 at 09:11:36 (+0100), Philip Hazel wrote: ]
> Subject: Re: "ESMTP" in banner?
>
> I could change the default Exim banner if enough people thought it a
> good idea. What do other people think?
Smail currenly puts it out as a second line in the 220 banner (though
only if ESMTP support is compiled in, of course).
09:10 [136] $ telnet most 25
Trying 204.92.254.2...
Connected to most.weird.com.
Escape character is '^]'.
220-most.weird.com Smail-3.2.0.93-pre (#4 1997-Apr-12) ready at Fri, 18 Apr 1997 09:14:23 -0400 (EDT)
220 ESMTP supported
quit
221 most.weird.com closing connection
Connection closed by foreign host.
However smail normally also always trys EHLO, which *has* caused some
minor problems with various commercial gateways to non-unix mail systems
(Lotus and Microsoft?). About the most I've been willing to compromise
is to suggest adding a configuration variable or two to list hosts
and/or networks that must not get an EHLO greeting and optionally those
to whom we won't answer to EHLO. I think this is better than trying to
interpret hints from the 220 message, but that's just an opinion.
Also in my opionion it's not worth crippling an implementation just
because you have to talk to one broken neighbour (eg. not compiling in
ESMTP support). However adding a hint to the 220 message doesn't
cripple or break anything, so it could be considered a good neighbourly
practice.
--
Greg A. Woods
+1 416 443-1734 VE3TCP robohack!woods
Planix, Inc. <woods@???>; Secrets of the Weird <woods@???>