Mail authentication error?

[Alexander Dalloz]

Hongwei Li schrieb:

>Hi,
>
>I have a problem in my FC4 system. System info:
>kernel: 2.6.16-1.2096_FC4
>sendmail: 8.13.6-0.FC4.1
>dovecot: 0.99.14-4.fc4
>
>Recently, users say that they cannot use Outlook to send emails out if they
>set SSL connection with port 587 for outgoing server and 993 for incoming
>server.  Then, I tested a guest account on several computers. The strange
>thing is when I test it on my PC and another one, everything works well.
>However, when I test it on other 2 computers (all are Win XP pro, with Outlook
>2003), I cannot send emails out.  The error message from Outlook is:
>
>Task 'Matt Morp - Sending' reported error (0x800CCC7D) : 'Your outgoing (SMTP)
>server does not support SSL-secured connections. If SSL-secured connections
>have worked in the past, contact your server administrator or Internet service
>provider (ISP).'
>
>The system log shows:
>
>Sep 22 13:27:22 morpheus sendmail[27813]: k8MFRMjY027813: [128.252.85.77] did
>not issue MAIL/EXPN/VRFY/ETRN during connection to MSA
>
>
>All computers are in our campus and in the same subnet.  Also, users didn't
>complain before yesterday, but I didn't change the system recently. My
>questions are:
>
>1. What does the above message mean?
>  
>
Sendmail informs you by syslogging that a host with the named IP did 
initialize a connection on the MSA port and that  none of the 4 named 
SMTP commands followed. Thus the SMTP session ended without a message 
being transferred, it even wasn't tried from client side.

>2. Why the same account can send emails from two PCs, but not from other PCs
>when all use Outlook 2003 with the same settings (SSL connection, port 587 for
>outgoing, etc.)?
>  
>
You will have to check your /var/log/maillog to see what happens if the 
non working client connection happens. Maybe increase the Sendmail 
log_level to 15 (default / standard is 9) to get verbose output.
My guess from several of these cases: I bet there runs Norton Antivirus 
or some Windows TCP stack breaking so called Personal Firewall on the 
hosts where the clients fail. If Norton Antivirus is checking outgoing 
SMTP connections and they are SSL/TLS secured, those connections fail. 
Personal Firewalls do harmful things if misconfigured.

>Thanks!
>
>Hongwei Li
>
Alexander