[OT, for Craig only] Re: mail sent to <craig@jcb-sc.com> is bouncing, why?

[Paul Derbyshire <pderbysh at usa dot net>]

POSTED BECAUSE CRAIG'S ADDRESS STILL BOUNCES.
PLEASE DISREGARD. I APOLOGIZE TO OTHERS ON EGCS, ON BEHALF OF THE MORONS AT
WORLD.STD.COM WHOSE FAULT THIS UNDOUBTEDLY IS.

At 08:20 PM 2/14/99 -0000, you wrote:
>Thanks.  That's so weird: I saw the email you enclosed sometime late
>Friday night, when I fetched my email (I could narrow that down by
>examining my archives, if necessary, I suppose).

Via the list, or a personal copy (with no X-Mailing-List, etc.)?

[...]

>So, I *suppose* I could fire myself, as both postmaster and `noc',
>whatever that is ("network oxymoron consultant"?  :).  But there's
>got to be a better way.

Hm. Well if anyone needs firing or something it's at world.std.com then.

>So far, I'm not aware that I've actually missed anything.  Are *all*
>my messages bouncing (this wouldn't count the ones from egcs-cvs,
>since those are sent by the egcs repository server, I assume)?  Or
>just some of them?

It must be intermittent. You clearly are getting mail from the list fairly
conistently with only a small amount of trouble, or else it'd have kicked
you off and you'd have failed to reply to some things or reported seeing
messages following up to messages you didn't receive even days later.

>As far as what little I can make of the header below: there seems to
>be little semantic information in the message "550 Wrong." from which
>I can gather a clue.

Well, it didn't make sense to me. It seemed to suggest my address was
ill-formed, which is about as sensible as a compiler responding to

int main (void) {
  int j;
  j=5;
  ++j;
  return j;
}

with

foo.c: 5: Parse error before 'j'


>But, from "554 <craig@jcb-sc.com>... Service
>unavailable", it looks like maybe what happened is that some MTA
>tried to deliver the mail *directly* to `jcb-sc.com', instead of
>to `world.std.com'.

jcb-sc.com (your box) doesn't run a working SMTP server? But to generate
this message it'd have to be running an SMTP server programmed to bounce
all mail, when it seems easier to just not run any at all. And "Wrong"
would mean I (or rather an MTA involved in my mail) mailed the wrong
machine instead of world.std.com. Except that doesn't explain world.std.com
itself bouncing the same way, and it seems odd your box might run an SMTP
server configured this way wihout you, "root", knowing... although you
could then try to find it and change it to forward to burley@world.std.com
any incoming mail to patch over the problem.

>How could this happen, with me still getting the email, I ask myself,
>since my LAN shouldn't accept any outsiders trying to connect to its
>SMTP server?

Oh you've got a LAN? And apparently I'm the outsider...

>And perhaps *that* copy never made it here, because some MTA didn't
>take the advice of the MX record to deliver it to `world.std.com',
>and I happened to be off-line and/or my SMTP server (qmail) rejected
>the connection (I have a non-null rcpthosts, which will mean something
>to the qmail-aware).

hmm.

>[craig@deer gnu]$ nslookup
>*** Can't find server name for address 192.168.0.1: Non-existent host/domain
>Default Server:  world.std.com
>Address:  192.74.137.5
>
>> jcb-sc.com
>Server:  world.std.com
>Address:  192.74.137.5
>
>*** world.std.com can't find jcb-sc.com: Non-existent host/domain
>> ls -d jcb-sc.com
>[world.std.com]
>$ORIGIN jcb-sc.com.
>@			1d2s IN SOA	world.std.com. netadmin.world.std.com. (
>					98101501	; serial
>					5D		; refresh
>					1H		; retry
>					2w6d		; expiry
>					1d2s )		; minimum
>
>			1d2s IN NS	world.std.com.
>			1d2s IN NS	AUTH01.NS.UU.NET.
>			1d2s IN MX	10 world.std.com.
>			1d2s IN SOA	world.std.com. netadmin.world.std.com. (
>					98101501	; serial
>					5D		; refresh
>					1H		; retry
>					2w6d		; expiry
>					1d2s )		; minimum
>
>So it might not be a problem on my end, or even my ISP's end at all,
>though I'm *really* speculating here, as I'm a newbie with all this
>email stuff (whatever happened to smoke signals?).

I dunno. I'm sure there's no problem with globalserve.net's SMTP since I
have no problem with any other mailing, but I'll copy my postmaster on it
anyways to see if they have any idea.

>If you want to test my theory, and you've had bounces from me
>at <craig@jcb-sc.com>, try sending the same test message to that
>*and* to <burley@world.std.com>...

Done. It bounces, kiosk bounces, and craig@jcb-sc.com still bounces.
Retards. The idiots that run world.std.com's mailserver deserve to come
down with a really bad std. I've posted all of this to
news.admin.net-abuse.email. Usually email net-abuse means spam, but this
SMTP server problem at world.std.com strikes me as a sort of net-abuse
related to email, since arbitrary bouncing of well-formed and non-abusive
messages is abusive, particularly when it even makes your zone and
technical contacts unreachable.


-- 
   .*.  "Clouds are not spheres, mountains are not cones, coastlines are not
-()  <  circles, and bark is not smooth, nor does lightning travel in a
   `*'  straight line."    -------------------------------------------------
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_____________________ ____|________     Paul Derbyshire     pderbysh@usa.net
Programmer & Humanist|ICQ: 10423848|