SMTP relaying

[JaseUK]

Dear all,

I have disabled SMTP relaying using Groupwise View from the Console but although it has stopped relaying messages Groupwise stills seems to accept mail addressed for people of domains that are not registered with Groupwise. It does not relay the mail, but it does still accept the lists of addresses and the email message which are forwarded to me as the postmaster with UNDELIVERABLE GATEWAY MESSAGE as the subject. Is there anyway to stop the groupwise SMTP server from saying OK when messages are not to members of the domains it accepts?

I have taken over from an old (not very good) administrator and, although fairly new to Novell, managed to close the relaying. It would seem that people had been using it for relaying for years before I closed it and they still try now. Groupwise is very accepting of post that it should not deliver only forwards it to me without letting the SMTP that is sending it know that it won't be delivered.

WHAT'S GOING ON HERE!!??

TIA
Jason.

 

[sobak]

I believe it will do this by default. If you want to receive those entries, remove yourself as the postmaster of the Domain. You can do this through the NWAdministrator program.

Open the Domain then go to your INET Agent.
Open up the Details page of the INET Agent, then go to the SMTP/MIME tab.
Click on "Undeliverables.
Remove the check mark from send to Postmaster.

You can also remove the Postmaster setting associated with your MailBox ID. This can be done through the same Details page but under the "Gateway Administrators" tab. Just remove the check from Postmaster.

I'm not sure if this is what you're looking for, if not let us know and we will work with your further....


david e
*end users are just like computers, some you can work with...others just need a simple reBOOTing to fix their problems.*

 

[JaseUK]

Thanks for the reply.

Though this would solve the problem my main concern is that unless the Groupwise SMTP server stops them from actually sending the message. eg: when the command RCPT TO: xxx@mydomain.com is sent to the server it should verify that mydomain.com is valid (one of the domains that I have listed to accept mail for) and if it is not return an error instead of replying OK and letting them continue with the DATA part.

Unless it stops them midway from trying to route email to other domains those using it as a relay server will continue to think that the messages they send though it are sucessfully delivered (even though they are not). Every month the number and size of emails that people attempt to relay through this server are increasing. They are ALL SPAM messages often sent to long lists of AOL and Yahoo addresses.

Any ideas?

 

[JaseUK]

As an addition: the reason I have a problem with Groupwise NOT interupting is that some of these emails contain attachments and that consumes our limited bandwidth very quickly. Sometimes all 4 running receive threads are taken up solely with SPAM mail.... Not nice...

One thought: I thought yesterday that this may be the cause - can anyone confirm this!? Our Novell server runs behind a firewall and proxy that maps all SMTP connections to our router straight to the Novell server - as a result the Groupwise SMTP server never sees the "true" identity (IP) of the mail sender and when it performs a reverse look up on 192.168.0.1 (our firewall & proxy server) it resolves to bepart.co.uk

Does this mean it thinks that all connections are trustworthy? Does groupwise ignore the HELO command? Why does it not verify each address in the RCPT TO list against the domains I supply it with???

I dunno.
TIA
Jason.

 

[sobak]

You say that your turned Relaying off? How exactly did you do that? Did you go through the NWAdministrator to disable relaying? david e
*end users are just like computers, some you can work with...others just need a simple reBOOTing to fix their problems.*

 

[JaseUK]

Yeah,

You need to use Groupwise View in NWAdmin to disable relaying - its under the SMTP button tab (I think...)

Useful information about disabling SMTP relaying for most email servers can be found at:

http://www.whitehats.com/papers/mailrelay/repair-mailrelay.html

Hope this helps
Jason

 

[sobak]

Unfortunately under GroupWise 5.x there is nothing you can do to prevent your GroupWise INET Agent from accepting the message in it's entirety. GroupWise 6.x has changed this setting and will reject the message at the RCPT TO command. Review the TID on Novell's web site dated 14 November, 2001 (note the last paragraph under solution)

http://support.novell.com/cgi-bin/search/searchtid.cgi?/10008701.htm

david e
*end users are just like computers, some you can work with...others just need a simple reBOOTing to fix their problems.*

 

[JaseUK]

Thanks. This is what I thought