Re: [Exim] Specific "moved - new address is" reject-message …

Hi Phil, on Fri, 26 Sep 2003 19:02:18 +0100 you wrote:

> > Not just Exchange, sadly. sendmail has the annoying habit of deciding
> > that any 550 error code means "User unknown". :-(
> Is there any work-around to reasonably guarantee that the user receives
> a bounce with the correct refusal reason?

I'm not aware of one (although I wonder what difference playing with the
exact 5xx code and/or introducing extended x.y.z codes into the message
might do; I haven't tried), but I shouldn't worry about it too much. Only
a tiny minority is likely to be real stuff, and only a percentage of that
will get a non-meaningful reply. But even for those cases, the user will
know their mail didn't get through for *some* reason, so can try to
contact whoever it was they were sending mail to by other methods.

When they moan about it, tell them to go and ask their IT people why their
mail server is not working correctly.

Incidentally, I don't know about sendmail, but I don't believe it's *all*
versions of Exchange that are braindead in respect to this specific issue.
I've certainly seen some reporting, verbatim, unusual 5xx's (e.g.
RBL-based) at RCPT time, and I'm pretty sure (but might be mistaken) that
the same applies for DATA.


Tim