From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Msuck: nntp://news.gmane.io/gmane.emacs.gnus.general/33744 Path: main.gmane.org!not-for-mail From: Lloyd Zusman Newsgroups: gmane.emacs.gnus.general Subject: Re: smtp authentication (sendmail relay) Date: 17 Dec 2000 18:20:38 -0500 Organization: FreeBSD/Linux Hippopotamus Preserve Sender: owner-ding@hpc.uh.edu Message-ID: References: <200012170829.eBH8T2Z30966@newsguy.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: coloc-standby.netfonds.no Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii X-Trace: main.gmane.org 1035169791 26675 80.91.224.250 (21 Oct 2002 03:09:51 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@main.gmane.org NNTP-Posting-Date: Mon, 21 Oct 2002 03:09:51 +0000 (UTC) Return-Path: Original-Received: from lisa.math.uh.edu (lisa.math.uh.edu [129.7.128.49]) by mailhost.sclp.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id 344E2D049D for ; Sun, 17 Dec 2000 18:21:10 -0500 (EST) Original-Received: from sina.hpc.uh.edu (lists@Sina.HPC.UH.EDU [129.7.3.5]) by lisa.math.uh.edu (8.9.1/8.9.1) with ESMTP id RAB29854; Sun, 17 Dec 2000 17:21:09 -0600 (CST) Original-Received: by sina.hpc.uh.edu (TLB v0.09a (1.20 tibbs 1996/10/09 22:03:07)); Sun, 17 Dec 2000 17:20:24 -0600 (CST) Original-Received: from mailhost.sclp.com (postfix@66-209.196.61.interliant.com [209.196.61.66] (may be forged)) by sina.hpc.uh.edu (8.9.3/8.9.3) with ESMTP id RAA08028 for ; Sun, 17 Dec 2000 17:20:12 -0600 (CST) Original-Received: from home.acholado.net (acholado.net [216.182.19.128]) by mailhost.sclp.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id 235E8D049D for ; Sun, 17 Dec 2000 18:20:38 -0500 (EST) Original-Received: by home.acholado.net (Postfix, from userid 510) id 5DC9A19E96; Sun, 17 Dec 2000 18:20:38 -0500 (EST) Original-To: ding@gnus.org X-Face: "!ga1s|?LNLE3MeeeEYs(%LIl9q[xV9!j4#xf4!**BFW_ihlOb;:Slb>)vy>CJM Original-Lines: 63 User-Agent: Gnus/5.0808 (Gnus v5.8.8) XEmacs/21.1 (Canyonlands) Precedence: list X-Majordomo: 1.94.jlt7 Xref: main.gmane.org gmane.emacs.gnus.general:33744 X-Report-Spam: http://spam.gmane.org/gmane.emacs.gnus.general:33744 Harry Putnam writes: > Lloyd Zusman writes: > > > [...] > > I can't seem to get connected to smtp server. My transcript tells a > different story: > (but at least I was able to connect to pop server) > [ ... ] > > I notice a lengthy pause between typing the telnet command to connect > to smtp server and the error message being returned. > > Possibly something to do with my ISP DNS machine?. But seemsno way to > connect to smtp server. Yes, I really think it has to do with the fact that your ISP is not supplying reverse DNS for your connection. Determine your IP address using `ifconfig' or some other means, and then type: nslookup www.xxx.yyy.zzz where "www.xxx.yyy.zzz" is your IP address. If you get a response which contains something like this ... can't find www.xxx.yyy.zzz: Non-existent host/domain ... then it would be almost certain that your ISP is not providing reverse DNS for your connection. They really *should* supply this, because as I mentioned earlier, more and more services on the internet are requiring proper reverse DNS in order for you to connect to them, and I'm pretty sure that a large service like newsguy would indeed be set up in this fashion. It's possible that this can be fixed very quickly by contacting your ISP and requesting that they set up reverse DNS for you. The DNS configuration is complicated, and quite often small errors creep in which disable things like reverse DNS. I have found from my own experience that ISP's often screw up reverse DNS, and that the tech support people at an ISP frequently only have to make a quick fix to some config file in order to get your reverse DNS working. If this is the case, your problems will be a lot closer to being solved after only making one short phone call to your ISP. And in any case, you really *should* have proper reverse DNS these days if you want to access services on the internet, irrespective of these specific SMTP problems. > Seem there would be tools to manage this... I seem to recall something > about fetchmail .... but not recognizing it in man page. Fetchmail might indeed handle this. But again ... without proper reverse DNS, it doesn't matter whether you access your SMTP via telnet or fetchmail or sendmail or whatever. -- Lloyd Zusman ljz@asfast.com