On Thu, 13 Dec 2001, Tamas TEVESZ wrote:
> $ exim -bs
> 220 ESMTP Exim 3.32 #1 Thu, 13 Dec 2001 00:00:36 +0100
> 1
> 500 Unrecognized command
> 2
> 500 Unrecognized command
> 3
> 500 Unrecognized command
> 4
> 500 Unrecognized command
> 5
> 500 Unrecognized command
> 6
> 500 Too many unrecognized commands
> $ echo $?
> 0
> $
>
> (this happens on 3.33 as well, in case anyone would point to that :)
>
> this is pretty obviously not what i would like to happen. is this
> intentional or am i screwing something up ? quick skim at spec.txt
> doesn't reveal anything relevant (that is, i looked for "return value"
> and "exit status", to no avail).
This is intentional. It is a defence against a security problem in
certain other software which might be exploited to access SMTP servers
that are not normally accessible. The effect is to send a lot of junk
commands before real SMTP commands. I don't want to give more detail
because I don't know what the publicity status of this problem is.
> could please anyone enlighten a poor soul ? :) also, am i asking for
> nonsense if i would like to get "proper" (that is, non-zero) exit
> status from exim in this case ?
For what case? A local SMTP session had one bad command? Only bad
commands? Too many bad commands? Bad commands with or without a valid
message? Etc...
Shouldn't you be using -bS for this kind of testing?
--
Philip Hazel University of Cambridge Computing Service,
ph10@??? Cambridge, England. Phone: +44 1223 334714.
