Sendmail-SMTP problem

[cetron at utah-cs.UUCP]

In article <1524 at uwmcsd1.UUCP> doug at uwmcsd1.UUCP (Doug Tiarks) writes:
>
>
>   We have been experiencing problems with sendmail when speaking SMTP 
>to some sites on the Internet. Symptoms of the problem are
>as follows: Our sendmail connects to the site to attempt to deliver
>the mail message, it then sends the To, From and Data messages and
>recieves acknowledgement for each. It then sends the Terminate
>message but, times out waiting for a reply. Sendmail gives a
>'read reply' error and puts the message back in the mailq. This occurs 
>everytime it attempts to send the message and, we only experience this problem

	I have lately been hacking to death the software tools mailer to work
with tek tcp/ip and have seen this kind of situation (or at least similar)

The software tools mailer has this 'problem' also....seems it will ack the
data packets, but NOT SEND THE   250 OK   message UNTIL it has succesfully
saved the message.  So, if the recipeint system is busy, timeout before
sending of  250 OK (and quit won't work yet since receiver is no yet
listening again)  or if the queing of the message is unable to complete 
the same situation could occur.

However, if you DO receive the 250 OK after send the <cr><lf>.<cr><lf> then
my scenario is wrong and then it sounds like a problem in the receiver of
some OTHER nature.

-ed cetron
center for engineering design
univ. of utah