[cobalt-users] RE: RE: Pop before SMTP - I've had enough.

[Charlie Summers <charlie@xxxxxxxxxx>]

At 10:21 PM -0500 3/29/02, Dan Kriwitsky is rumored to have typed:

> The only thing I would guess is that somehow the default "Relaying
> denied" message got messed up so it's tacking on the "Check mail first"
> message too.

   Not "messed up," but changed. Although I don't use that nonsense (if even
a valid user tries to send before POPing, he only gets "Relaying Denied"),
some configurations of the POP Before SMTP RPMs change the default error
message for _any_ relay. (There's no way for sendmail to differenciate
between a valid user mistakenly STMPing first and a spammer trying to hijack
the server.) The error message itself is in sendmail.cf, under check_rcpt
(search for "anything else is bogus"). You could easily change it to "550
Drop Dead Moron" and restart sendmail; changing to the "check first" message
is trivial.

   It isn't the way I like to do it, but it is by-design in some
configurations. (I'm more used to straight linux than Cobalts, so I can't
speak directly to what the people at Sun do in the PKG files.) Personally,
I'd rather keep the bad guys guessing. But then, I have one user who calls me
about getting a "Relaying Denied" error every couple of weeks telling me the
machine's broken. After the fifth or sixth time, I've stopped being surprised.

         Charlie (who appreciates the diversion from getting together tax
                   records)