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November 06, 2003
Panther Mail bug
Under the old Jaguar system I had originally started sending email using my local copy of sendmail. This worked fine until the anti-spam sites started including DHCP'd address blocks in their list of bulk-mail. The solution was to create an ssh tunnel from my laptop to that of my static IP based mail server.
/usr/bin/ssh -L2525:dirty.deadmime.org:25 dirty.deadmime.org -N &
That line had worked fine, by setting up a localhost port 2525 that mapped to my static mail server just fine for a long time. I would have preferred if I could get Mail.app to actually initiate the connection, but as it stood I had no problem running a script to start and stop any such process. And this worked.
Under Panther, the Mail.app no longer seems to support this. To prove this initiate an SSH port forwarding session such as the one above (to your own mail server please) and set up your Mail.app use localhost and the selected port for sending email. Watch your static mailserver logs and you can see a message stating why this connection is being rejected (Ethereal will show it as well):
Mail.app is NEVER sending a HELO command.
When you send it will look like the application didn't even try to send the message. If you setup the local postfix, Mail.app works just fine. It can even connect to other mail servers I have access to without a problem. It seems to be just going through an SSH port forwarded session.
Posted by Dan at November 6, 2003 10:20 AM