Re: [Exim] Relaying at ISP SMTP - ANSWERED

On Sun, Nov 18, 2001 at 07:42:37PM -0500, Richard Welty wrote:

<snip>

> Paul has already been given the clues he needed to solve his problem;
> unfortunately, he's already made up his mind and isn't listening.

So you're gonna give me clues, but no answers? Ach!

Look, at the beginning of this, I didn't know who Philip was (until you
folks pointed it out). My apologies to Philip or anyone else who was
offended by my posts. And I have no particular wish to be argumentative.
However, when I find a white rabbit and twenty people insist on telling
me it's green, I must protest.

The facts are these:

1. When you contact smtp.quillandmouse.com, you may get any of a number
of XO mail hosts, selected presumably at random, or at least appearing
so.

2. It is unreasonable to assume that one would be able to relay through
only a fraction of these, and that which one you connected with-- at
random-- would determine whether relaying would be allowed or not.

3. It is true that nothing in the SMTP dialog from the point of the
first 220 message on has any bearing on whether relaying will be
allowed. This according to RFC 2821 and according to the SMTP dialog for
working and non-working examples.

4. It is true that the deletion of the "hosts_override" line from the
previously posted config file eliminated the problem of arriving at an
"endpoint host" as opposed to a "relay host". This is evident from the
facts that a) no relaying was possible prior to that point; b) that was
the only change made to the config file at that time; and c) relaying
became the rule after that.

I can only assume that there is something (unknown) which occurs prior
to the first 220 response from the server, which tells XO that I wish to
speak to a relaying server. Either by my transmission or the server's
deduction. But whether that is true or not, it's clear that the eliding
of the "hosts_override" line from the config file did in fact make the
difference, something which has been debated on this list.

Now, if someone has a reasonable answer besides "it's the server,
stupid!", I'm all ears. And if you can prove that any of the assertions
above are _not_ true, I will happily apologize for my seeming arrogance.

Paul