On Tue, 18 Mar 2003, Greg A. Woods wrote:
> The only possible purpose for a 554 response after the initial
> connection is, as the RFC effectively says, for some host which must
> answer on port#25 for unspecified reasons, but which never speaks SMTP
> on port#25. It's a safety measure to prevent users from being confused
> if they somehow cause their client-SMTP mailer to route to such a host
> by accident.
We use the 554 code on our internal, backend, servers (via the host_reject
global option) - mail can only reach those machines from certain other
machines to force it to pass through virus scanners, etc. - anything else
gets a 554.
People would only see this error if they incorrectly try to send mail
directly to one of those machines. I guess it might be more friendly to
return a better error, but why go through more SMTP dialogue just to
reject it later?
As for above, how do you know that the thing connecting is not going to
talk something other than SMTP before you return the error, if it's done
at connect time [or are you basing it on IP address]?
- Bob
--
Bob Franklin <r.c.franklin@???> +44 (0)118 378 6630
Systems and Communications, IT Services, The University of Reading, UK
