On Mar 9 1:19, ScruLoose wrote: > Now, I'm curious as to what's really going on in there... let me see if > I've got it right: > > 1. Fetchmail makes a POP3 connection to my ISP, starts suckin' down > messages. > 2. Fetchmail grabs a connection to exim on localhost (exim as a > 'listener') > 3. Exim either delivers the mail successfully and returns 0, or chokes > on it and returns one of a variety of error codes (depending on why and > how it choked). > 4. Fetchmail deletes the mail from the POP-server *only* after Exim > returns "okay, I got it" > > More or less? Successful delivery returns 250 but apart from that yes. > So... what is it about a mail that causes exim to say "ick! this is > spam" and thus return 501... I don't have spamassassin or anything... > this is exim itself having this response, right? Obviously, this is not > an urgent point, as my particular situation is solved... but I'm > curious, so any info or links to good reading on this would be welcome. Any code 500-599 means a permanent error (syntax error, reject for policy reasons etc) and resending the message later won't change that. Exim is returning 501 because of a syntax error in the message. According to fetchmail(1) Exim used to return 501 when rejecting messages for policy reasons (it returns 550 - at least in v3.36), hence fetchmail reason for having it in the antispam codes list. Try reading Exim's doc starting at section 40 (Explanation of default config file). The stuff before this just explains each option with little context so it doesn't make much sense unless you know what you're looking for but the rest is better. The SMTP protocol is documented RFC821 so you can see how mail servers communicate and what the three digit codes mean. You can then test stuff by "telnet localhost 25" which is useful for troubleshooting problems. -- Jason Chambers (chambersj@chambersj.dyndns.org) Leicester, England Registered Linux User #271693 (http://counter.li.org)
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