If It Weren't For Linux Mail, I Might Get Bored

So, now that I switched to BellSouth, my outgoing email on my server stopped working...

Took me a few days to even figure out that it wasn't working, but fortunately only took me about an hour to fix.

Long story short was that I had forgotten that I had to update my sendmail.cf to change the SMART_HOST from adelphia to bellsouth.

Of course, after I made the change, it still didn't work. When I checked the maillog on the server, I saw that I was receiving an error. Checking my mail on the server, I saw that I was getting the following error (note - user@domain.com is substituted for the actual email address which appeared in the message):

----- The following addresses had permanent fatal errors -----

(reason: 550 relaying mail to witsdom.com is not allowed)

----- Transcript of session follows -----
... while talking to mx01.mail.bellsouth.net.:
>>> RCPT To:
<<< 550 relaying mail to witsdom.com is not allowed
550 5.1.1 ... User unknown

The solution turned out to be fairly simple. I had to change the following line in sendmail.mc and remake the sendmail.cf file with the command referenced at the top of the file.

define(`SMART_HOST',`mail.bellsouth.net')dnl

to

define(`SMART_HOST',`[mail.jax.bellsouth.net]')dnl

the key was the inclusion of the square brackets around the host name, not the addition of the .jax The .jax was just for bonus points.

The answer came from the following thread on webservertalk.com.

The pertinent portion is excerpted here.

> ***the bounce:
>
> The original message was received at Mon, 29 Mar 2004 07:32:42 -0500
> from localhost.localdomain [127.0.0.1]
>
> ----- The following addresses had permanent fatal errors -----
>
> (reason: 550 .net 022: Your current IP address is not allowed to relay
> to
> us.army.mil Solution: Connect using BellSouth Internet Service.)
>
> ----- Transcript of session follows -----
> ... while talking to mx00.mail.bellsouth.net.:
><<< 550 .net 022: Your current IP address is not allowed to relay to
> us.army.mil
> Solution: Connect using BellSouth Internet Service.
> 550 5.1.1 ... User unknown
><<< 503 No recipients specified

So do what it says, use BellSouth's _outgoing_ mail relay (NOT their MX).
If you are attempting to do this, but are misdirected due to MX for the
relay name, put the relay name in square brackets [smtp.bellsouth.net] or
whatever, so the MX will be ignored. Even if that requires
authentication, sendmail or postfix can act as SMTP AUTH client.

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Posted by David at July 13, 2005 11:51 AM