The Boston Diaries

The ongoing saga of a programmer who doesn't live in Boston, nor does he even like Boston, but yet named his weblog/journal “The Boston Diaries.”

Go figure.

Friday, March 21, 2008

The Email Situation

About that email issue

Our problems all stem from the greylist daemon I wrote. Or more specifically, the interaction between the greylist daemon and sendmail. Or even more specifically, the greylist daemon and the milter library.

As far as I can tell, the problem is: customer uses Lookout Outlook or Lookout, Exploit! Outlook Express, configured to use SMTP AUTH. Sendmail hands the authentication off to some other process, which okays it, then sendmail hands the request off to the greylist daemon, which, since it's coming from a foreign address, of course greylists it, and the customer gets an error message from Lookout Outlook or Lookout, Exploit! Outlook Express that says, “Try again later!”

And then we (or our resellers) get a call.

Sigh.

What I would like is for sendmail to skip the greylist daemon if SMTP AUTH is being used, but I'm not sure how to apply the clue-by-four to sendmail.

That's separate from the issue that spammers seem to be clueing in to greylisting and are finding ways around it …

Arg!

Obligatory Picture

[The future's so bright, I gotta wear shades]

Obligatory Contact Info

Obligatory Feeds

Obligatory Links

Obligatory Miscellaneous

You have my permission to link freely to any entry here. Go ahead, I won't bite. I promise.

The dates are the permanent links to that day's entries (or entry, if there is only one entry). The titles are the permanent links to that entry only. The format for the links are simple: Start with the base link for this site: https://boston.conman.org/, then add the date you are interested in, say 2000/08/01, so that would make the final URL:

https://boston.conman.org/2000/08/01

You can also specify the entire month by leaving off the day portion. You can even select an arbitrary portion of time.

You may also note subtle shading of the links and that's intentional: the “closer” the link is (relative to the page) the “brighter” it appears. It's an experiment in using color shading to denote the distance a link is from here. If you don't notice it, don't worry; it's not all that important.

It is assumed that every brand name, slogan, corporate name, symbol, design element, et cetera mentioned in these pages is a protected and/or trademarked entity, the sole property of its owner(s), and acknowledgement of this status is implied.

Copyright © 1999-2024 by Sean Conner. All Rights Reserved.