mail / mailx question

[Cameron Simpson]

On 08Jul2011 15:10, Paul Allen Newell <pnewell at cs.cmu.edu> wrote:
| On 7/8/2011 2:58 PM, Steven Stern wrote:
| > On 07/08/2011 04:46 PM, Paul Allen Newell wrote:
| >> Jul  8 14:09:16 yoyo sendmail[1513]: p685IBvb002893:
| >> to=<pnewell at cs.cmu.edu>, ctladdr=<paul at localhost.localdomain>  (500/500),
| >> delay=15:51:05, xdelay=00:06:01, mailer=esmtp, pri=150723,
| >> relay=mx-lb-03.srv.cs.cmu.edu. [128.2.217.14], dsn=4.0.0, stat=Deferred:
| >> Connection timed out with mx-lb-03.srv.cs.cmu.edu.
| > The mail server at cmu doesn't like you.  Check with the admins to see
| > if you need to use SMTP auth when connecting in order to send mail. If
| > so, it's easy to set it up.
| >
| Sounds good, appreciate your help,

Except that "Connection timed out" means you never got to talk to the
CMU mail server, so it is _not_ an authentication issue. And since it
timed out instead of Connection refused" that points at your ISP blocking
(by dropping) outbound SMTP connections from your host.

This is common - it makes it much harder for corrupted machines to spam.
Likely it means you need to deliver outgoing email via your ISP's SMTP
server.

The "telnet ...blah... 25" suggestion elsewhere in the thread lets you
test SMTP (port 25) connectivity; I gather you can't SMTP direct from
one of your other responses.

You probably need to tell your mail system (probably sendmail?) that its
relay is your ISP's SMTP server.

Cheers,
-- 
Cameron Simpson <cs at zip.com.au> DoD#743
http://www.cskk.ezoshosting.com/cs/

I'm behind a corporate Exchange Server which seems to have            
changed recently to converting everything it sees to HTML.             
How embarrassing. - Dan Espen <despen at telcordia.com>