Rumor has it that Zane H. Healy may have mentioned these words: Well, having never run an open-relaying SMTP server, I'm not well versed, but the qmail documentation at http://www.qmail.org/top.html does give instructions on how to initiate an SMTP conversation from the telnet prompt... I knowz it ain't much, but I HTH... Roger "Merch" Merchberger -- Roger "Merch" Merchberger --- sysadmin, Iceberg Computers Recycling is good, right??? Ok, so I'll recycle an old .sig. If at first you don't succeed, nuclear warhead disarmament should *not* be your first career choice.

On Saturday 18 May 2002 06:23 am, Zane H. Healy wrote: I think that some of the RBL sites will test a server for open relaying if requested. This, of course, has the problem that you'd be blacklisted if you have an open relay :-) Pretty much all mail servers will allow relaying from the local machine to any mail address. Some will allow anyone on the local network to relay through the machine, so using another machine on your network isn't necessarily a good test either. Best thing to do would be to get shell access to a machine somewhere on the Internet, and do the following: telnet $VMS-MAIL-SERVER 25 helo foo # This seems to be pretty much ignored by mail servers # nowadays, but is often required mail from: foo(a)bar.com #where this is your email address rcpt to: baz(a)bat.net #where bat.net is not the domain that you've got set #up on the VMS machine data #Type some data here . quit You should at some point get an error message saying that relaying is denied (either after you type 'quit', or after 'rcpt to', depending on the mail server). Also, in case you do have relaying enabled, make sure that baz(a)bat.net is either your own email address, or someone who knows you're trying out mail relaying - random people who don't know you won't be too happy getting test mails :-) (if you're in need of a junk to: address, send it to mailtests(a)eco.li; it's on one of my domains, so I can let you know if any messages get to it). Alternatively, if you give me the IP address of your VMS machine, I can do a quick test within a few minutes of getting your email. Dan -- The past always looks better than it was. It's only pleasant because it isn't here. -- Finley Peter Dunne (Mr. Dooley)