sendmail: "address@server.com, we do not relay"

sendmail: "address@server.com, we do not relay"


Author: Scott Bronson
Email: bronson@soda.berkeley.edu

System Architecture: All/General
RedHat Release: RHL 5.1 (Manhattan)
FAQ Category: Email
Modification Date: Oct 7, 1998

Question:

Hi, I've got a Win95 machine that's behind a Redhat 5.1 Linux Masq box.
the masq box also runs my mail server.  On my Win95 machines I can
receive mail from the Linux box just fine, but when I try to send
email it says "...address@server.com, we do not relay.

Answer:

You have run into an anti-SPAM defense.  Previous RedHat releases had
relaying turned on by default.  Spammers would actually search the net
for RedHat servers whose admins hadn't turned relaying off and use them
to forge mail.  To stop this, RedHat now ships with relaying turned off
by default.

Put the Windows machine's IP address (and the IP addresses of any other
machines that will be sending mail) in the /etc/mail/ip-allow file.  You
can also put names in the name-allow file.  Then get sendmail to re-read
its config files, easiest is probably issuing a "killall -HUP sendmail"
command, hardest would be to reboot the box.

You should now be able to relay mail from specific machines through your
server.


References:

Thanks to Alexander Woodby