Re: [UUG/MLUG] test

[Mark Donnelly <EMAIL:PROTECTED>]

On Sat, 2 Oct 1999, Jeff Thomas wrote:

> Why is it that only when I send an e-mail to the list that using
> mlug.missouri.edu as the outgoing mail server works?

The short answer is: spam control.

Longer answer:
Late versions of sendmail (the most common mail server) do their best to
make sure that the mail that they handle are either going directly to the
machine that they are (ie, they are the destination), or that the mail is
coming from the machine that they are (they are the source).

Why?  One of the favorite tactics of email spammers is to send mail from
an account that doesn't actually exist, so that they don't have to bother
with replies.  (More intelligent spammers use real addresses, so as to
collect the names of people who reply and get a list of addressed
guaranteed to have a human attached.)  So, people started to discern the
need for validation of the email, based on domain names, ip addresses,
etc.

Now, obviously this can be disabled, but then you get into issues of who
to allow.  Not everyone who has an mlug account has a missouri.edu IP
address, so you can neither use DNS nor IP to allow that.  I would say
that having everyone use their ISP-provided smtp host (in your case,
Mizzou is the ISP, and smtp.missouri.edu is the mail host) might well be
the best solution.

Is there some reason that you aren't happy with using exchange to send out
mail that has your mlug account as a from address?  Do they not allow
that, or do you just not like using exchange?  If it's the latter, another
hack-around would be to use the showme mail system - mail.missouri.edu.
The main worry there is that mail is completely unsupported as an smtp
host.

HTH,
--Mark