No Subject

["Stephen E. Collins" <lmnet@web66.coled.umn.edu>]

From: Carol Doerksen <cdoerksen@TELIS.ORG>

>Can someone help me? When I try to send a reply or a new message, I get
this
>error message:  "...the SMTP server said: 551  I do not relay for foreign
>hosts." What does this mean?  This is happening on my Power Mac at school.
>I switched from an LCIII to this Power Mac and this is when this problem
>started occurring. Please help! Thank you!


First, and foremost, it means that the managers on your
mail system are doing good work to block people from
using your mail site to relay spam.  This is a very good
thing, so whatever might be wrong, they deserve praise.

Since spam has become such a problem, server
administrators everywhere are tightening security
and we'll probably see such problems more and more.
It used to be that anybody accepted mail from anyone
for relay, so even if things weren't configured quite
right it still worked.  Thank the folks who send spam
for making this more difficult.

Basically, what this message means is that the mail
server you are using to *send* mail doesn't recognize
who you are so it won't let you send mail.  Sending
mail is a completely separate process from receiving
mail, so even if you can still receive e-mail you may
not be able to send it (and vice versa).

The first thing to suspect is that the IP address on
your new machine isn't properly registered.  Many
mail servers will do a reverse lookup to validate
you when you send mail.  For example, if I try to
send mail from a computer, my mail server does a
DNS lookup on my IP address and makes certain
my machine's DNS name ends with "umn.edu".  If it
doesn't, or if it doesn't have a DNS name, then
it won't accept my mail.

Next, check with your service provider to be certain
how your mail should be configured.  It may be
that they changed the mail relay host, so you have
to configure something a bit different.

Finally, it might be that your mail server is old
or cheap software that doesn't do mail relay, but
instead passed it off to some other "friendly" mail
server which no longer accepts mail for relay.  In
that case, your system administrator will need to
upgrade your mail server.

In any case, you'll probably need to contact the system
administrator for your mail server to solve this.


Stephen E. Collins
sec@web66.umn.edu

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