Re: MTA: usage of smart host

[Kenneth Dombrowski <kenneth@ylayali.net>]

On 03-04-14 13:35 -0500, Jeffrey L. Taylor wrote:
> Quoting Karsten M. Self <kmself@ix.netcom.com>:
> > If anyone's seen the AOL banning DSL mail item at Slashdot, the box I
> > was using to attempt sending to AOL is in fact registered via
> > dyndns.org.  Which didn't help.
> > 
> >    AOL Bans Mail From DSL-Hosted Servers
> >    http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=03/04/13/2215207
> > 
> > FWIW, I just got off the phone with a reporter, I expect this will get
> > more coverage before we're through ;-)

Thanks for writing this up, I've been quite pissed off about it myself
for a few days now. 

> They may be checking the IP address, not the domain name you use.  You
> can plug your IP address into several search engines linked off this
> page to find out why they reject you:
> 
> http://postmaster.info.aol.com./index.htm

This page will tell me nothing either. I've tested that I receive root@
and postmaster@ mail from a yahoo address; but I've never gotten
anything in response to filling out those forms. 

> My cable connection with a dynamic IP continues to work.  I am
> registered with dyndns.org also.  Make sure you check the MX box and
> put your IP address in the box.  This is not required by RFCs, but
> some MTAs check for an MX record anyway as an anti-spam measure.  If
> all else fails, you should be able to configure your MTA to send
> e-mail to aol.com thru your ISPs SMTP server.  In Postfix, add the
> following line to /etc/postfix/transport and run "postmap transport":
> 
> aol.com	smtp:[smtp-server.myISP.com]
> 
> You will also need the following line in /etc/postfix/main.cf if it is
> not already there:
> 
> transport_maps = hash:/etc/postfix/transport
> 
> Other MTAs should have something comparable.

Just in case it helps others get mail to their families & friends, this
is the router I added to my exim.conf. I added it *before* all other
routers in the ** ROUTERS CONFIGURATION ** section...

smarthost:
  driver = domainlist
  transport = remote_smtp
  route_list = aol.com smtp-server.nyc.rr.com byname

(obviously, change "smtp-server.nyc.rr.com" to your own ISP's smarthost)

At that point mail started to go through to aol, but I got messages like 
this in /var/log/exim/mainlog when using that router:

2003-04-15 18:48:10 195ZDm-0004sD-00 failed to open database lock file
/var/spool/exim/db/wait-remote_smtp.lockfile: Permission denied (euid=8
egid=8)

to fix that I just did this:

# chown -R mail:mail /var/spool/exim/db

I hope this is of help to someone...

Kenneth