On Wed, 11 Oct 2000 15:14:59 -0400,
"L.D. Best" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>
> Let us hope that someone somewhere is fixing the "not so clever"
> function of Linux/Unix "sendmail." If they don't, it soon will be
> impossible to send e-mail from that platform.
It seems to me that we're talking about two different things here.
1. smtp authentication (sp?)
2. configuring your MTA to always use a smarthost or send direct
to MX
> Remember the bit about "open relays" and messages being refused because
> they come from an known open relay? Well, soon all relays will be
> closed. And when "spammers" have to find a new way to send their stuff,
> so will the people currently stuck with the non-functionality of that
> "sendmail."
You don't need an open relay to send direct to MX. I'm not aware
of any non-functionality regarding #2 in Linux/Unix MTA's, although
some sites block direct to MX mail using the real-time list of known
dialups (DUL), and some ISP's do port 25 filtering, so that you must
use your ISP's smarthost.
> If places are requiring authentication, I guess someone needs to figure
> out how to provide it by revising Arachne [DOS & Linux versions].
Only places with "roaming" users would have a reason to require smtp
authentication. I'm not sure how widespread its use is, or which
mailers support it. None of the smarthosts that I use, including
1nol.com, require it.
> l.d.
> ====
> On Wed, 11 Oct 2000 18:38:42 +0200, Bernie <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> wrote:
>
> > Neil wrote:
> >> Seems to me this is all the more reason that someone in the DOS world
> >> should try to emulate the clever functionality of Linux/Unix "sendmail",
> >> which does not depend on a designated smtp host. It just goes out and
> >> finds an smtp host in the recipient's domain, and skips the middleman.
The ka9q mailers (Yan, etc.) do this by default, although they can
be configured to always use a smarthost.
> > It's pretty useless IMHO since you can't (AFAIK) use it to subscribe
> > to mailinglists (you can not verify who it was that sent the mail in
> > a good way).
I don't see any reason why you can't subscribe to a mailing list
using direct to MX. Mailing lists should use e-mail confirmation
to verify the subscriber.
> > If we instead could add this feature to Arachne's sendmail.c it
> > would be even better, so once again, "all" we need is the correct
> > RFC.
Of course, it would be nice to be able to add this feature (smtp
authentication), but I'm not sure how critical this is. Arachne
is a fine program, but IMHO, it sometimes tries to do too much.
Howard E.
Ottawa, Canada
--
DOS TCP/IP * http://www.ncf.ca/~ag221/dosppp.html
