🚀 go-pugleaf

In article  <ZNalVhBm9L4JFA9D@highwayman.com>
           richard@highwayman.com "Richard Clayton" writes:

> In article <1239440946snz@nospam.demon.co.uk>, pete@nospam.demon.co.uk
> writes
> 
> >Inspection of the 
> >Received: headers seems to show that ESMTP is used as the mail 
> >passes through Demon's MTAs, except for the final hop from the 
> >punts to the user's SMTP server.  Can this be changed?
> 
> This is a matter for demon.service ... 

I did consider that, but thought I'd try first in the group where 
those most affected (as you say below) would be most likely to be 
interested.  Follow-ups duly set.

[For those in d.s reading for the first time, this was about the 
punts initiating SMTP mail transfer with "HELO" rather than the 
usual "EHLO" signifying ESMTP.]

>       pretty unlikely to be an
> engineering priority I'd have said -- especially since almost everyone
> now uses POP3 (where you do size control another way)
> 
> but what do I know ?  see .sig

Richard, you know _everything_ ;-)  But I accept your point about 
priority, hence my query in the article as to whether this was a 
simple config issue or that the punts are physically incapable of 
ESMTP.  I would hazard a guess that the software they are running 
has not changed much over the years...

> >I've tried to "coax" the punts by advertising "ESMTP ready" in my 
> >sign on banner, 
> 
> that's clearly a good idea in general, but of course it won't change the
> SMTP delivery code (which won't have any logic for honouring size limits
> anyway)

That sounds like they are not ESMTP-capable :(

> >PS. One additional thing I've noticed is that if I reject mail 
> >with a "552 Message exceeds fixed maximum message size" after the 
> >DATA command, this message is not apparently relayed back to the 
> >sender in the DSN.  Are the punts anaware of a 552 error?
> 
> are you saying that there isn't a DSN, or that the message attached to
> the 5xx is not relayed ?

The latter.  The delivery failure was reported, but the transcript 
went something like

    A message you sent could not be delivered to the following recipients:
         pete@xxxxxx.demon.co.uk
    
    MAIL FROM:<pete@xxxxxx.co.uk>
    250 <pete@xxxxxx.co.uk> OK
    RCPT TO:<pete@xxxxxx.demon.co.uk>
    250 <pete@xxxxxx.demon.co.uk> OK
    DATA
    354 Enter mail, end with .
    
and it stopped there.  As dictated by rfc1870 and 2821, my smtp 
server waited for the closing CRLF.CRLF before sending the 552 
result code, but for whatever reason this message did not make it 
back to the sender.  Whether this is the fault of the punts or 
A&A's MTAs or Thunderbird I don't know, but suspect the first.

Thanks for taking the time to reply,
Pete

-- 
   "We have not inherited the earth from our ancestors,
    we have borrowed it from our descendants."