sender domain must exist...

sender domain must exist...

[Prateek Sadhukhan]

Hi all,
when i try to send mails to some addresses it bounces saying "sender
domain must exist". 
if i try to send it using pine it seems to go thru.
I am behind a firewall. my company domain is hss.hns.com, while my
machine is psadhukhan.hss.hns.com. Its seems to me that when the
receiver of the mail tries to authenticate the domain, it tries to
find the domain psadhukhan.hss.hns.com which being behind the firewall 
is not visible to it. But then this should be a problem with any mails 
send from my box whether i use gnus or pine.
Also most mails are going thru only a few addresses are creating this
problem. Please help.
thanks in advance,
regards
prateek

Re: sender domain must exist...

[Norbert Koch]

Prateek Sadhukhan <psadhukhan@hss.hns.com> writes:

> I am behind a firewall. my company domain is hss.hns.com, while my
> machine is psadhukhan.hss.hns.com. Its seems to me that when the
> receiver of the mail tries to authenticate the domain, it tries to
> find the domain psadhukhan.hss.hns.com which being behind the firewall 
> is not visible to it. But then this should be a problem with any mails 
> send from my box whether i use gnus or pine.

Hi.

It seems to me that neither user-mail-address nor mail-host-address is
set. The former defaults to "user@mail-host-address" and the latter
defaults to your hostname which might explain your problem. Thus, try
setting user-mail-address, either using customize-variable or

(setq user-mail-address "psadhukhan@hss.hns.com")

HTH, norbert.

Re: sender domain must exist...

[Greg Stark]

Norbert Koch <n.koch@eai-delta.de> writes:

> Prateek Sadhukhan <psadhukhan@hss.hns.com> writes:
> 
> > I am behind a firewall. my company domain is hss.hns.com, while my
> > machine is psadhukhan.hss.hns.com. Its seems to me that when the
> > receiver of the mail tries to authenticate the domain, it tries to
> > find the domain psadhukhan.hss.hns.com which being behind the firewall 
> > is not visible to it. But then this should be a problem with any mails 
> > send from my box whether i use gnus or pine.

Usually this error message actually refers to the domain name in the HELO of
the SMTP connection, it has to match the DNS PTR record for the ip address of
the interface the mail is coming from.

This is a blatant violation of the RFC 822 which specifically says that the
receiving end must not require this. But you should check all your DNS servers
and make sure they all have PTR records that match the information your MTA is
using.

-- 
greg