LinuxSA Mailing list archives

  From: Richard Russell <richardrussell@mail.com>
  To  : linuxsa <linuxsa@linuxsa.org.au>
  Date: Fri, 9 Feb 2001 18:37:37 +1030

ATTN Greg Lehey! re MTA config

Hi all and Greg. This is off topic for this list, but due to circumstances
beyond my control, I seem to be unable to contact Greg Lehey in any other
way.

Yesterday morning and this morning, I received approximately 60 messages
from Greg, copied to a bunch of addresses at mail.com, the providers of a
mail forwarding service that I use. Greg is annoyed at something to do with
the Telstra configuration, compounded by the fact that I set my from and
reply-to addresses to my mail.com address. I wrote an apology to the
mail.com people, emailed to Greg in every way that I thought possible to
reach him, but have received no response from him, and only a continued
barrage of "fix your MTA" messages... So I thought, I'll send it to
LinuxSA -- I know greg reads theswe messages. Perhaps some people here would
like to comment on the appropriateness or otherwise of greg's messages
(included below my response for reference). People may also like to note
that in particular, greg is complaining to mail.com about an IP address that
AFAIK, belongs to Telstra.

Sorry to take this to the list, but I have no other way of contacting Greg
(phone is possible, but inconvenient when one is talking about email), and
am interested to know if perhaps, it is I who is doing something wrong by
setting my from and reply-to differently (I think this is not uncommon, and
certainly has many practical uses when your real email address is
non-permanent).

Interested to know what opinions people have on this issue.

(and yes, I am more than mildly irritated about the way it has been handled)

rr


> -----Original Message-----
> From: Richard Russell [mailto:richardrussell@mail.com]
> Sent: Friday, 9 February 2001 12:38 AM
> To: Greg Lehey; postmaster@mail.com; postmaster@lemis.com;
> russell.richard@saugov.sa.gov.au
> Cc: abuse@mail.com; hostmaster@mail.com; double-bounce@lemis.com;
> how_the_hell_do_i_email_greg@lemis.com
> Subject: RE: Please fix the MTA configration on 139.134.6.78.
>
>
> Firstly to the mail.com people, I must apologise for the 60+
> emails you have
> received from my friend, Greg Lehey. The situation here is
> that I send mail
> using my ISP (bigpond.com, owned by Telstra in Australia),
> and set the from
> and reply-to fields to my address at mail.com, which forwards
> to my telstra
> account. This is so that I can send and receive mail through
> the normal ISP
> mechanism, but people see it coming from my permanent address,
> richardrussell@mail.com (I have changed my home ISP too many times for
> unavoidable reasons to use the ISP address), and hence, they put that
> address in their address book and always reply to that address.
>
> ie: mail really comes from my richard.russell@telstra.com
> account, but looks
> like it comes from richardrussell@mail.com
>
> My friend Greg is somewhat militant against any possible spam, and is
> agressive in the way that he deals with it to the point where
> communication
> from my email address to his is close to impossible. He seems
> to have gotten
> over-excited about this, and is sending mail to you people at
> mail.com about
> an IP address that Telstra in Australia seem to own.
>
> Greg: Please do not do this again. 60+ emails is excessive.
>
> Thanks, and please accept my apologies.
>
> rr (richardrussell@mail.com, richard.russell@telstra.com,
> russell.richard@saugov.sa.gov.au)
>
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: Greg Lehey [mailto:grog@sydney.worldwide.lemis.com]
> > Sent: Thursday, 8 February 2001 8:51 AM
> > To: postmaster@mail.com
> > Cc: abuse@mail.com; grog@sydney.worldwide.lemis.com;
> > hostmaster@mail.com; richardrussell@mail.com
> > Subject: Please fix the MTA configration on 139.134.6.78.
> >
> >
> >
> > The attached message is caused by a misconfiguration of your mail or
> > DNS server: your mail server (139.134.6.78) claims to
> > be mailin5.bigpond.com, which does not resolve.  Since
> > this situation has continued for a considerable period of time, we
> > must assume that it is not a transient problem.  These
> messages are a
> > nuisance.  Please fix this problem or stop sending us mail.
> >
> > You appear also to have a problem with your reverse DNS.  We were
> > unable to find a name for your server with the IP address
> 139.134.6.78.
> > This indicates a problem with your reverse domain.
> >
> > If you believe this assessment is incorrect, please contact me by
> > phone at +61-8-8388-8286 between 9 am and 6 pm Central
> Australian time
> > (currently GMT+1100).
> >
> > Greg Lehey
> >
> > > From double-bounce@lemis.com  Wed Feb  7 22:42:50 2001
> > > Return-Path: <double-bounce@lemis.com>
> > > Delivered-To: grog@lemis.com
> > > Received: by wantadilla.lemis.com (Postfix) via NOTICE
> > > 	id 469E96A90D; Wed,  7 Feb 2001 22:42:50 +1030 (CST)
> > > Date: Wed,  7 Feb 2001 22:42:50 +1030 (CST)
> > > From: MAILER-DAEMON@lemis.com (Mail Delivery System)
> > > To: postmaster@lemis.com (Postmaster)
> > > Subject: Postfix SMTP server: errors from unknown[139.134.6.78]
> > > Message-Id: <20010207121250.469E96A90D@wantadilla.lemis.com>
> > >
> > > Transcript of session follows.
> > >
> > >  Out: 220 wantadilla.lemis.com ESMTP Postfix
> > >  In:  EHLO mailin5.bigpond.com
> > >  Out: 250-wantadilla.lemis.com
> > >  Out: 250-PIPELINING
> > >  Out: 250-SIZE 10240000
> > >  Out: 250-ETRN
> > >  Out: 250 8BITMIME
> > >  In:  MAIL FROM:<richardrussell@mail.com> SIZE=2615
> > >  Out: 250 Ok
> > >  In:  RCPT TO:<grog@lemis.com>
> > >  Out: 450 Client host rejected: cannot find your hostname,
> > [139.134.6.78]
> > >  In:  RSET
> > >  Out: 250 Ok
> > >  In:  RSET
> > >  Out: 250 Ok
> > >  In:  QUIT
> > >  Out: 221 Bye
> > >
> > > No message was collected successfully.

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