[TriLUG] RoadRunner and kmail

[Ben Pitzer]

William,

First of all, THANK YOU for sending the header information on these
things.  I can't tell you how often I have to remind third level techs
at RR to do the very same thing.  Without the headers of emails, it's
pretty tough to troubleshoot what's happening to them.

Now, as for your issue.  The problem is that either your MTA (sendmail,
postfix, qmail, etc) has your domain configured as
localhost.localdomain.  Thus, all mail that you send is apparently
having wscalione at localhost.localdomain in the from: header.  Therefore,
the SMTP server that you're trying to connect to for the delivery of
this message is rejecting it for having a bad sender address.  I'm
assuming that this is from your Dell address, which I read your email to
say that you do not have configured with a remote SMTP server.

Basically, I'd suggest that you set the SMTP server for the Dell account
to be smtp-server.nc.rr.com, same as for your RR account.  It will still
perform that service for you, as you are sending from on our network.  I
myself use RR's SMTP server for the Mindspring account that I've had for
4 years and refuse to give up quite yet.

One last request I have:  PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE check your SMTP
server that you're running (which I feel obliged to add is against RR's
AUP, but which I really don't care about) to make sure that it's not an
open relay.  We've been having problems with folks who, because they're
on an 'always on' connection, decide that they can run a mail server for
themselves.  Many of these folks leave their mail servers open to relay
from any host and any domain, and malicious spammers use these open
relays to funnel email onto our mail servers.  These messages which
often can't be delivered, and can't be bounced back because they come
from bogus addresses, clog our mail servers to no end.  It's different
from dialup mail servers because our customers are ALWAYS ON, an can be
found and hit later, or hit in a group, making it much easier to do this
to us than to, say, Earthlink or AOL.

If someone is interested, I might be able to put together a 5-10 minute
presentation on some of the other challenges faced by broadband ISPs
that are not faced by traditional dialup ISPs.  Many of you, I'm sure,
would find it interesting.

Thanks, and CLOSE THOSE OPEN RELAYS!!!

Regards,
Ben Pitzer

PS - Someone once posted a link to a site which tests your mail server
as being an open relay.  Could you repost that link?  Thanks!

On Sat, 2002-07-20 at 00:35, William Scalione wrote:
> Since you guys were so gracious as to help me get my email working
> I figured I'd ask another question. I still have a small problem with my
> email in that some emails go out and others don't. I have 2 email addresses,
> one is my main address at wscalione at nc.rr.com (roadrunner) and the other
> is my Dell address that was given to me by my employer. scalion at dellepro.com
> Using kmail and RH 7.2 I have setup my email with the roadrunner account as
> a smtp server and pop3 and the dell account as a pop3 only.
> 
> If I send mail to the Dell address (from roadrunner smtp) it works fine. I
> can also send to some newsgroups I am on.. Other addresses don't fare so
> well. I can NOT send a message to myself (from RR to RR) or a couple of
> other contacts I have tried. Also this mail is from Windows as it wont send
> to this newsgroup either.  Here is an excerpt from my /var/spool/mail file
> when  I tried to send a message to myself. I guess this has something to do
> with  the domain name, but I really don't know how to change it. Any help
> would be  greatly appreciated. Sorry for the newbie questions.
> 
> 
> 
> --g6IHYwn01644.1027013698/c822387-a--
> 
> >From MAILER-DAEMON at c822387-a  Fri Jul 19 01:23:26 2002
> Return-Path: <MAILER-DAEMON at c822387-a>
> Received: from localhost (localhost)
> by c822387-a (8.11.6/8.11.6) id g6J5NQY01544;
> Fri, 19 Jul 2002 01:23:26 -0400
> Date: Fri, 19 Jul 2002 01:23:26 -0400
> From: Mail Delivery Subsystem <MAILER-DAEMON at c822387-a>
> Message-Id: <200207190523.g6J5NQY01544 at c822387-a>
> To: <wscalione at localhost.localdomain>
> MIME-Version: 1.0
> Content-Type: multipart/report; report-type=delivery-status;
> boundary="g6J5NQY01544.1027056206/c822387-a"
> Subject: Returned mail: see transcript for details
> Auto-Submitted: auto-generated (failure)
> 
> This is a MIME-encapsulated message
> 
> --g6J5NQY01544.1027056206/c822387-a
> 
> The original message was received at Fri, 19 Jul 2002 01:23:21 -0400
> from wscalione [127.0.0.1]
> 
>    ----- The following addresses had permanent fatal errors -----
> <wscalione at nc.rr.com>
>     (reason: 553 5.1.8 <wscalione at localhost.localdomain>... Domain of sender
> address wscalione at localhost.localdomain does not exist)
> 
>    ----- Transcript of session follows -----
> 
> ... while talking to ncmx02.mgw.rr.com.:
> >>> MAIL From:<wscalione at localhost.localdomain> SIZE=316
> 
> <<< 553 5.1.8 <wscalione at localhost.localdomain>... Domain of sender address
> wscalione at localhost.localdomain does not exist
> 501 5.6.0 Data format error
> 
> --g6J5NQY01544.1027056206/c822387-a
> Content-Type: message/delivery-status
> 
> Reporting-MTA: dns; c822387-a
> Received-From-MTA: DNS; wscalione
> Arrival-Date: Fri, 19 Jul 2002 01:23:21 -0400
> 
> Final-Recipient: RFC822; wscalione at nc.rr.com
> Action: failed
> Status: 5.1.8
> Diagnostic-Code: SMTP; 553 5.1.8 <wscalione at localhost.localdomain>... Domain
> of sender address wscalione at localhost.localdomain does not exist
> Last-Attempt-Date: Fri, 19 Jul 2002 01:23:25 -0400
> 
> --g6J5NQY01544.1027056206/c822387-a
> Content-Type: message/rfc822
> 
> Return-Path: <wscalione at localhost.localdomain>
> Received: from there (wscalione [127.0.0.1])
> by c822387-a (8.11.6/8.11.6) with SMTP id g6J5NLY01542
> for <wscalione at nc.rr.com>; Fri, 19 Jul 2002 01:23:21 -0400
> Content-Type: text/plain;
>   charset="iso-8859-15"
> From: William Scalione <wscalione at localhost.localdomain>
> Message-Id: <200207190123.03513 at wscalione>
> To: wscalione at nc.rr.com
> Subject: test1
> Date: Fri, 19 Jul 2002 01:23:21 -0400
> X-Mailer: KMail [version 1.3.2]
> MIME-Version: 1.0
> Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit
> 
> test1
> 
> --g6J5NQY01544.1027056206/c822387-a--
> 
> -------------------------------------------------------
> 
> 
> Thanks
> Bill
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> _______________________________________________
> TriLUG mailing list
>     http://www.trilug.org/mailman/listinfo/trilug
> TriLUG Organizational FAQ:
>     http://www.trilug.org/~lovelace/faq/TriLUG-faq.html
>