[exim] How to debug non-specific "temporarily rejected RCPT"

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Author: Ephraim Vishniac
Date:  
To: exim-users
Subject: [exim] How to debug non-specific "temporarily rejected RCPT"
After moving to a fresh Gutsy Gibbon Ubuntu installation from an aging
Edgy Eft, exim4 is deferring a lot of mail with lines like this one:

2008-04-09 11:09:39 H=athedsl-19963.home.otenet.gr (tgvx)
[87.202.78.151] F=<Rogers@???> temporarily rejected RCPT
<ephraim@???>

Whitelisting the sending host in local_host_whitelist gets around the
problem, but obviously I don't want to whitelist everybody.

Other "temporarily rejected" lines list a cause, such as "greylisted"
or "could not complete sender verify", but I'm stumped by these
non-specific rejects. My two-part question is (1) how do I debug such
generic messages and (2) in case part 1 fails, what do you think is
the cause? Googling the list archives and Exim FAQ didn't turn up any
good match for this, not that I recognized anyway.

exim -bV says:

Exim version 4.67 #1 built 04-Oct-2007 20:49:12
Copyright (c) University of Cambridge 2006
Berkeley DB: Sleepycat Software: Berkeley DB 4.3.29: (September 6, 2005)
Support for: crypteq iconv() IPv6 GnuTLS move_frozen_messages
Lookups: lsearch wildlsearch nwildlsearch iplsearch cdb dbm dbmnz
dsearch nis nis0 passwd
Authenticators: cram_md5 plaintext
Routers: accept dnslookup ipliteral manualroute queryprogram redirect
Transports: appendfile/maildir/mailstore autoreply lmtp pipe smtp
Fixed never_users: 0
Size of off_t: 8
Configuration file is /var/lib/exim4/config.autogenerated