On Mon, 10 Dec 2001 10:06:40 GMT, Michael Quinion <[log in to unmask]>  said:
> A curious problem has occurred with sprint.ca. Messages from our
> LISTSERV to established subscribers get through with no difficulty.
> However, service messages to new subscribers are bounced, with an
> error message advising
>
>   "553 Authentication is required to send mail as
>   <"L-Soft list server at The LINGUIST List. (1.8d)">"
>
> Support at sprint.ca say that a 'glitch' on their mail servers stops
> any mail that contains a parenthesis in the 'From:' ID string.

Naughty, Naughty Sprint.

In any case, you might want to ask them why they're basing authentication
on the RFC822 headers, rather than the RFC821 headers that they SHOULD
probably be basing them on. The distinction being that basically every
mailing list will break, as a properly run mailing list has a different
RFC821 'MAIL FROM:' than RFC822 'From:', so bounces don't go back to the
list.  In addition, the 821 'RCPT TO:' will point at a user mailbox,
while the 'To:' field quite likely doesn't.

In other words, it's *NORMAL* for the recipient to not appear in any of the
RFC822 headers, so you shouldn't be basing authentication on it.

So they're looking at a header they shouldn't be, and then failing to
parse it per the rules in RFC822, which *will* be 20 years old next August.

Really no excuse for it.

> Two questions:
>
> a) Is this a known problem anywhere else? (Is this, in fact,
>    likely to be the cause of the problem?)

I've seen other broken mail servers that refuse pre-authenticated mail.
I usually just 'quiet del' the subscriber and send them and their postmaster
a canned message about the foolishness of allowing users to subscribe to
mailing lists they can't get mail from.

> b) Is there a cure, apart from getting Sprint to do something
>    about their mail server or altering the ID string (the
>    latter hardly seems necessary)?

Delete the user, drop them a note, cc: [log in to unmask]  Make sure
that your note hints that the user may get getter service from an ISP that
knows how to run a mail server.

--
                                Valdis Kletnieks
                                Operating Systems Analyst
                                Virginia Tech