[Still having problems with reply to list] Am Mi, den 09.03.2005 schrieb William John Murray um 8:58: > >> I am trying to use smtp.aol.com as relay at the moment... >> Here is the command OP: But I am lost as to what "address testing mode" >> is doing. Is this good? >> >> echo '/mx aol.com' | /usr/lib/sendmail -bt -d8.8 >> ADDRESS TEST MODE (ruleset 3 NOT automatically invoked) >> Enter <ruleset> <address> >> > getmxrr(aol.com, droplocalhost=0) >> getmxrr(aol.com) returns 4 value(s): >> mailin-01.mx.aol.com. >> mailin-04.mx.aol.com. >> mailin-02.mx.aol.com. >> mailin-03.mx.aol.com. > >It is fine and tells us that name resolution through Sendmail works >properly on your host. >Take the Paul's advice and place the ISP's smart host name into squared >brackets: [smtp.aol.com]. This prevents Sendmail from trying to find the >MX through DNS. You then should no longer get an error "stat=Deferred: >Name server: smtp.aol.com: host name lookup failure". >The "stat=Data format error" you get when authentication against the >ISP's smart host fails. You can probe authentication manually by running >the (E)SMTP manually using telnet to port 25. google.com holds several >examples on how to do that. > >Alexander Thanks Paul and Alexander, The [smtp.aol.com] does SOMTHING; because if I use it the error changes to "Name server: smtp.cs.com.: host name lookup failure" and smtp.aol.com was an alias for smtp.cs.com. I then tried using this, with or without [], and I get: relay=smtp.cs.com. [205.188.159.185], dsn=5.6.0, stat=Data format error Is that progress? If I try the telnet idea, then 2 times out of 3 I get "Connection closed by foreign host." but I did manage to do: telnet smtp.aol.com 25 Trying 205.188.159.185... Connected to smtp.aol.com (205.188.159.185). Escape character is '^]'. 220 smtp-los01.proxy.aol.com ESMTP Sendmail 8.12.11/8.12.11; Wed, 9 Mar 2005 18:02:14 -0500 mail from: w.murray@xxxxxxxx 250 2.1.0 w.murray@xxxxxxxxxxx Sender ok rcpt to: w.murray@xxxxxxx 250 2.1.5 w.murray@xxxxxxxxxx Recipient ok data 354 Enter mail, end with "." on a line by itself Here we go . 554 5.7.1 (IPT:S1) http://postmaster.info.aol.com/ipt AOL has identified this mail to be unsolicited bulk email. quit 221 2.0.0 smtp-los01.proxy.aol.com closing connection Connection closed by foreign host. Nothing ever arrived, presumably because of the spam trap. But it looks like this worked? I did try to craft a non-spam mail, but never got anything past the filter. Sorry to be so slow...thanks VERY much for helping... Bill