This seems to be collateral damage of an anti-spam mechanism, and I
sent the following complaint to the Alcatel postmaster and the
bug-report address of the anti-spam software in question.
--
Simon.
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[removed IETF mailing list from CC:; added bugs@sabernet.net]
Michael Richardson writes:
> So, I'm resorting to the only other way I have - embarassment.
> Specifically, it says:
> The original message was received at Sat, 21 Jun 2003 14:27:27 -0400 (EDT)
> from IDENT:root@lox.sandelman.ottawa.on.ca [192.139.46.2]
> ----- The following addresses had permanent fatal errors -----
> <Donna.Hogan@alcatel.com>
> (reason: 550 sender ignored: ottawa.on.ca does not have a name server record)
> ----- Transcript of session follows -----
> ... while talking to primary.alcatel.com.:
>>>> MAIL From:<mcr@sandelman.ottawa.on.ca>
> <<< 550 sender ignored: ottawa.on.ca does not have a name server record
> 554 5.0.0 Service unavailable
Apparently, Alcatel implements "Sender Verification" on this gateway,
see:
http://sabernet.home.attbi.com/software/nospam.html
Sender Verification:
Verification of the sender's email address can be turned on by
adding the following line to your netperm-table:
smap: nospam ns-required
When a sender's email address is received, a DNS lookup is
performed to verify that an NS record exists for the given
domain. For example, assume that 001232.com does not exist:
220 mailhost SMTP/smap Ready.
mail from: <spam@001232.com>
550 sender ignored: 001232.com does not have a name server record
This is useful if you receive lots of spam from nonexistent
domains.
This code is obviously buggy in that it returns "false positives" in
valid setups such as Michael's. I hope this will be fixed, and
Alcatel would be well-advised to turn off the "ns-required" option
until it is.
--
Simon Leinen.
SWITCH
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