Still no sendmail - but a clue?

[Paul Howarth]

On Fri, 2005-03-11 at 07:58 +0000, William John Murray wrote:
>    Hello again,
>              I have been stuck, able to 'send email' from mail clients,
> unable to use sendmail for systems logs etc.  I think dns is OK, but
> still get errors dsn 5.6.0 stat="Data Format Error"
> 
> Alexander pointed out I should not test as root. I did not think it
> would matter, as the sendmail daemon is root anyway, but thank you.
>  
> Also I know I need authinfo, this I think I am providing.
> 
> But I tried 'telnet smtp.aol.com 25' and 'telnet my-employer 25'
> and saw somthing very odd. The connect message is:
> 
> 220 smtp-los01.proxy.aol.com ESMTP Sendmail 8.12.11/8.12.11; Fri, 11 Mar
> 2005 02:53:43 -0500
> 
> for any host I connect to, with the los01 number maybe changing.
> Somehow I get redirected to AOL whenever I use port 25. Does this ring a
> bell with anyone? [Recall..I can send email from evolution]
> 
> If I go a dns lookup this is not the expected route.

This is because you are using an AOL dialup. As an anti-spam measure,
AOL redirects all outbound SMTP connections from their customers through
AOL's mail servers. This enables them to apply rate limits, quickly
identify spammers/trojanned windows boxes etc. One of the results of
this is that AOL, despite having on average a very technically-
challenged customer base, emits a remarkably spall amount of spam
compared with the likes of comcast, verizon, roadrunner etc.

Paul.
-- 
Paul Howarth <paul at city-fan.org>