rganesh@nu.cs.fsu.edu (12/05/90)
Reply To: rganesh@nu.cs.fsu.edu Subject: Sendmail Ver 5.65 on a Vax 11/780 As the subject indicates, we are running version 5.65 of sendmail on a Vax 11/780 running Ultrix (4.2 BSD). Now here is the problem - When one sends mail out to a VM/VMS machine, the mail usually does not go through. The error is something like - Reply: Read Error. The mail just sits in the queue. We had the same problem with Version 5.61 of sendmail and I was told that Version 5.65 fixes the problem. This problem used to crop up with the old sendmail with a well known - Bad File Number error. It seems like 5.65 has not fixed it either. The above indicates a timeout problem between Unix and VMS based machines. Is there someone else with the same problem, or probably, a fix? Thanks in advance for your suggestions/comments. -Ganesh -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Ganesh Rangarajan System Support Group, Florida State Univ., Tallahassee, FL Off: 11 Lov Bldg, FSU Phone: (904)-644-7339/2296 (904)-224-8951 E-Mail : rganesh@nu.cs.fsu.edu (Internet) ganesh@fsu (Bitnet) --------------------------------------------------------------------------------
karl_kleinpaste@cis.ohio-state.edu (12/06/90)
At a guess, and only that, you are not using E=\r\n (or -ba) with sendmail. RFC821 requires that lines be terminated with <cr><nl>, not just <nl> as is the UNIX habit. If you're not specifying the proper sequence, the VMS host may simply be waiting for you to finish typing your HELO statement at it, and wondering why it's taking your host so bloody long to do so. Your sendmail, on the other hand, believing that it has properly initiated a conversation, is wondering why the VMS host has not responded with a 2xx code so that the conversation may continue. Try echo foo | Mail -v -s testing some.user@vms.hostname which will invoke sendmail underneath with verbosity, so that you'll see the actual SMTP conversation take place. If it just hangs after your end says HELO, this is probably your problem.