Q: Sendmail -- working around overly long greet pauses

[Ed Greshko]

Philip Prindeville wrote:
> I'm trying to deliver email to some sites that seem to have
> obnoxiously long greet pause configured (yes, it's a
> Chinese site, and yes, it's their contact address for reporting
> abuse... guess they aren't about to make it easy to do):
> 
> # date ; sendmail -q -v ; date
> Tue Feb 20 12:41:19 MST 2007
> 
> Running /var/spool/mqueue/l1J1BZTd015129 (sequence 1 of 4)
> <anti-spam at ns.chinanet.cn.net>... Connecting to ns.chinanet.cn.net. via esmtp...<anti-spam at ns.chinanet.cn.net>... Deferred: Connection timed out with ns.chinanet.cn.net.
> 
> Running /var/spool/mqueue/l1HKVCiu004463 (sequence 2 of 4)
> <anti-spam at ns.chinanet.cn.net>... Deferred: Connection timed out with ns.chinanet.cn.net.
> 
> Running /var/spool/mqueue/l1HKWqcD004481 (sequence 3 of 4)
> <anti-spam at ns.chinanet.cn.net>... Deferred: Connection timed out with ns.chinanet.cn.net.
> 
> Running /var/spool/mqueue/l1GKJkvD011374 (sequence 4 of 4)
> <anti-spam at ns.chinanet.cn.net>... Deferred: Connection timed out with ns.chinanet.cn.net.
> Tue Feb 20 12:44:29 MST 2007
> #
> 
> 
> I've tried bumping the connect timeout:
> 
> define(`confTO_CONNECT', `5m')dnl
> 
> (which results in "O Timeout.connect=5m")...  as well as
> running sendmail as:
> 
> sendmail -q -v -O Timeout.connect=5m -O Timeout.initial=5m
> 
> but this doesn't seem to make any difference.  It looks like
> the kernel's internal maximum timeout on a connect() is forcing
> a shorter interval.
> 
> Anyone know what the workaround for this is?  Do I need to force
> the kernel's TCP connect() timeout to something larger?

Before you try fixing anything please try....

telnet ns.chinanet.cn.net 25

It never answers the call.  At least not from Taiwan.




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"May your future be limited only by your dreams."
-- Christa McAuliffe