Hi all,
My goal is to allow customers with a valid username/password on an NIS
server to relay through our mail server from non-local IPs. Those who
are sending from a local IP should not have to auhenticate.
I have that all working, but there is one problem that I can see. It
seems that some email clients see AUTH in the ESMTP options list and
try to authenticate regardless of whether it's required or not. Netscape
in particular seems to do this and forces you to type in your password
when you send a message. I don't have any other clients handy that
support authentication so perhaps it's only Netscape that works this
way (or perhaps they all do). It seems to me it would make more sense
to only do authentication of the server demands it.
The problem is that if I enable SMTP AUTH, all of a sudden thousands of
local users who have been sending mail just fine will be forced to enter
their password each time. It works of course, but a lot of users will not
like the extra step.
I know this isn't Exim's problem, but maybe there's a way for Exim to
make things a bit more friendly?
For example, if the client's IP is listed in host_accept_relay then
don't present the AUTH option after EHLO at all. I think that would
do it and shouldn't break anything.
Or am I missing a bigger picture here?
Mark
PS: There were no examples that I could find of how to make SMTP AUTH
work with NIS. I can post or email my settings if anyone is
interested.
