diagnosing an e-mail failure

[Wade Curry]

Neil Schneider(pacneil at linuxgeek.net)@Tue, Jan 06, 2004 at 10:45:36AM -0800:
> 
> wade at syntaxman.org said:
> > Hi,
> >
> > Anyway, my friend sent e-mail to a known good address (I sent one from
> > work that was successful, so I know that it's a good address).  In return
> > I got the following message from my qmail (with their IP and e-mail
> > address replaced, of course).
> > --- qmail's response
> >
> > <username at domain.com>:
> > XXX.XXX.XXX.X does not like recipient.
> > Remote host said: 554 <discourse.syntaxman.org[69.56.173.81]>: Client host
> > rejected: No spam [spam_iplist] Giving up on XXX.XXX.XXX.X.
> >
> > --- Below this line is a copy of the message. (minus the message itself :)
> >
> > Return-Path: <myfriend at syntaxman.org>
> > Received: (qmail 11223 invoked from network); 6 Jan 2004 11:56:03 -0000
> > Received: from unknown (HELO mailbox.syntaxman.org) (127.0.0.1)
> 
> It appears that the receiving end is being overly strict.
> mailbox.syntaxman.org isn't shown with an associated MX record. So either
> change the configuration of the MTA so that the helo matches the MX record
> for mail1.syntaxman.org or add it to the list of MX records. Also there is
> a missing PTR record pointing to that hostname. The PTR resolves that
> address to discourse.syntaxman.org  If forward and reverse DNS and helo
> don't match and don't point to an A record and an MX record, some servers
> will not accept mail from your server.
> 

I see what you're saying.  I need to fix that quick... but I'm not
sure that is why the connection was denied.  The "unkown (HELO.."
seems to be from _my_ server.  

It makes me think that I've wound up in someone's spamblocking
list.  I don't know when, why, or how, which is frustrating.  I'm
not even sure how to find out who's list I'm on. :-/

Wade Curry