Re: smtp session failed error

[Kyle Wheeler <kyle-mutt@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

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On Tuesday, March 31 at 10:38 AM, quoth Russ Urquhart:
> I am trying to test the sending of an email to myself but i get the 
> following error message:
>
> mutt SMTP session failed: 550 5.1.8 invalid/host-not-in-DNS return 
> address not allowed

Hmmm, that looks like an error message from your email server. My 
guess is they have instituted some sort of rule as an anti-spam 
measure, and you're falling afoul of it. It's not entirely clear from 
their message whether it's your return address that's upsetting them, 
or whether it's your computer's IP address, but since we can only 
fiddle with the former, let's assume it's that.

> The mail tries to authenticate, and i think it does, but then i get 
> the above message.

Really? Huh. So, assuming you're succesfully authenticating, that 
means it's actually an anti-VIRAL measure that you're triggering. Not 
that that's important, I suppose, just thinking aloud here.

> I set my hostname to Russ-Urquharts-Computer-2.local as this is what 
> the hostname command returned.

That shouldn't matter.

> my username is russurquhart1, my isp is verizon.net. and set the 
> incoming and outgoing mail servers according to what i have on my 
> other mail clients.

My guess is that the problem is your return address. For historical 
reasons, if you don't specify one, mutt guesses your return address 
based on your local hostname and your local username. Unless you run 
your own mail server, though, mutt's guess is almost certainly 
incorrect. You probably just need to specify your *actual* verizon 
email address, like so:

      set from=russurquhart1@xxxxxxxxxxx
      set use_from=yes # this is the default value

In your case, what mutt is probably guessing is: 
russurquhart1@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx, which of course isn't 
an email address that Verizon has any interest in allowing. You could 
force mutt to guess the correct address by setting your hostname to be 
verizon.net, but that wouldn't be a good idea for obvious reasons. :)

~Kyle
- -- 
The rule is, jam tomorrow and jam yesterday---but never jam today.
                                                        -- Lewis Carroll
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