back into the fold

P.A.Osborne pao at org.uk
Tue Jul 23 01:27:47 BST 2002


OK I know its bad form to reply to myself,  but I have cracked the
problem.


Many thanks to Tim and Matthew for pointing me in the right direction.


> However when I send email out from my PC,  although I have sendmail
> configured to masquerade the envelope addresses.  If I try to send
> myself a mail to:  pao at panforte.org.uk - the SMTP transaction fails
> with:
> 
>    ----- The following addresses had permanent fatal errors -----
> pao at panforte.org.uk
>     (reason: 550 rejected: cannot route to sender <pao at luthien.cats>)
> 
>    
> This comes from the SMTP server receiving the email.  Not all SMTP
> servers are doing this to me but it is a tad frustrating.

OK the problem was twofold:

1. at the HELO part of the smtp transaction sendmail reported that it
   was running out of luthien.cats (which it is locally)

2. sendmail was trying to route directly to MXs on the internet

To resolve the problem I did the following:

Compiled Exim and installed that in place of Sendmail,  reasons being:

a. The config file doesnt look like line noise.
b. (embarrased to admit) I know how Exim works as I ran the UKC mail
   system for three years and figured this would be trivial to  do with
   sendmail  - it probably is - but its taken me an hour to pull the source 
   for Exim and get it working - think I spent considerably more trying
   to get Sendmail doing the same thing.

Ho hum.

Paul




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