Verrrrry interesting...

One of the two recently common aborts displays "Message accepted for
delivery', then 'IPCSHUTDOWN: UNABLE TO GRACEFULLY RELEASE THE CONNECTION.
(SOCKERR 102)', then 'Program terminated in an error state.  (CIERROR 976)'.
Sounds like a pretty good match for your sniffer results.

The other (actually more common) result displays the same 'Message
accepted...' and then goes straight to 'Program terminated...' without
displaying anything about why it terminated.

Both of these seem to come only with specific error codes in mpe variables
that 'Mail' sets, and the good news is that the emails actually go, and my
routines now treat these specific 'failures' as success.

Tip for anyone else using 'mail' -- the 'Message accepted' message is a
better indicator than the variables it sets.  If you need to have the
computer know whether something went ok, redirect output to a file, then
input just the 1st record and check for 'Message accepted', along with
checking  the status variables.
Mail variable = 0 --  it went ok.
'Message accepted' + mail  variable = 2 + smtpresult = 0 + fserror = 0 +
ipcerror = 0 or 102  --  it went ok, with or without an error message.
Anything else I have seen so far -- it didn't go.  (Lots of these early last
week at the peak of the virus email flood, but very few since then).

--------------------------------

Mail lets you specify a 'from' address and an smpt host.  Quick experiments
with 'smtpauth.flash.net' yield only 'Authentication required' error
messages, and I don't know a way to get around that with 'mail'.


----- Original Message -----
From: "Emerson, Tom" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Wednesday, February 04, 2004 16:05
Subject: Re: [HP3000-L] 'MAIL' program from Telamon / Vytek


> From: Dave Powell [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
>
> Anybody else using the it?  Maybe you can help me.
>
> worked fine until two weeks ago. [...]
> I know that the difference in the last two weeks has been
> that our ISP has been having problems.  They have admitted to
> it and blame it on being swamped by virus emails. [...]
> PCs sending emails [...] fail with messages about the connection
> having been unexpectedly disconnected by the remote server.

I'm having that same problem at home as well -- exactly as you describe.  I
did some checking with a network sniffer and I found that at the end of
sending a message, one side [or the other] is sending an SMTP "RSET"
command, which is resulting in the ISP's server dropping the connection at
the same time as my client is issuing an "exit" command.  The connection
drops [usually within 50ms] before my client finishes sending the "exit"
command, so my e-mail client thinks "it didn't go" and requeues the item.
[yeah, "dumb, I know..."]

> Anybody know a way to make SBC behave better?  Anybody know a
> good ISP that NEVER goes flaky the way SBC did?

oh, well that explains it -- my ISP is SBC also :(

HOWEVER...

poking around on their internal "news" server
[prodigy/yahoo/sbc."support".email or some such] I found (repeated)
references to a server called smtpauth.flash.net.  You have to set your
client to do a "proper" logon, using your complete "username@sbc-subsidiary"
as your user ID, but so far I haven't had an unexpected drop for the last
three days.

I don't know if "mail" or "sendmail" can be configured in this way, but it's
worth a shot.

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