[Exim] Remote error: "451 Mail data invalid, ignored"

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Author: Greg Ward
Date:  
To: exim-users
Subject: [Exim] Remote error: "451 Mail data invalid, ignored"
Anyone recognize this error message: "451 Mail data invalid, ignored".
Almost every message from a mailing list of ours (mems-talk@???)
to one particular domain (21cn.com) is failing like this. In
particular, here's an excerpt from Exim's mainlog:

2002-01-17 16:03:59 16Qwpm-0007VE-00 SMTP error from remote mailer after end of data: host mta.21cn.com [202.104.32.232]: 451 Mail data invalid, ignored.

...so obviously this isn't a local problem, it's something on the remote
end. I was just wondering if anyone had seen this error before and
knows whose fault it is.

I have tried sending a couple of toy messages to postmaster@???
with a manual SMTP session, and they were accepted OK. Haven't got a
reply, so I can't be sure they went through, but I'm not getting any
SMTP errors.

I tried capturing an SMTP session with tcpdump (to load into ethereal on
my machine), but that didn't work -- some tcpdump/ethereal
incompatibility I suppose. Sigh.

I also looked at the headers and body of one of the failing messages;
the only suspect thing I spotted was this in the header:

052I Message-ID: <001601c19b29$8cff4ab0$5e4c6fa6@wangzy>
054F From: "Wangzy-IMETU" <wangzy@???>
028T To: <mems-talk@???>
         ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^


ISTR that this violates RFC (2)822, and that this is one of the things
Exim will reject with headers_check_syntax. I thought for a moment that
the remote mailer is picky about that too, but a manual SMTP session
dispelled that idea.

Any thoughts?

        Greg
--
Greg Ward - software developer                gward@???
MEMS Exchange                            http://www.mems-exchange.org