[geeks] A puzzling mail error

[Phil Stracchino]

Rich Kulawiec wrote:
> On Tue, Jun 24, 2008 at 07:16:36PM -0400, Phil Stracchino wrote:
>> That's when this started happening:
>>
>> Jun 24 19:04:56 babylon5 postfix/smtpd[27566]: NOQUEUE: reject: RCPT
>> from pond.babcom.com[10.24.32.25]: 553 5.7.1 <[127.0.0.1]>: Helo command
>> rejected: mail server in loopback network (test);
>> from=<goose at caerllewys.net> to=<alaric at caerllewys.net> proto=ESMTP
>> helo=<[127.0.0.1]>
>>
>> I like the way it asserts that 10.24.32.35 is 127.0.0.1.  Or is it
>> trying to tell me that pond (.35) just suddenly started claiming to be
>> loopback in its HELO?  It seems kinda surprising a release would have
>> gotten out the door if it did something that blatant.
> 
> I believe it's trying to tell you that pond is HELOing as [127.0.0.1].

Yeah, that's what I was thinking was going on.  The question becomes,
why did it suddenly start doing this, and is it a Thunderbird bug that
they somehow missed?


UPDATE:  Ha!  just found the problem.

The same day I updated Thunderbird, I *ALSO* replaced AVG 7.5 with
Avast! 4.8.  And Avast!. without asking whether you want it to, silently
sets up a filtering proxy on the machine to let it scan outgoing mail.
So when Thunderbird sends its HELO, it detects that the connection has
been diverted to localhost and says "Hi, localhost."  Then Avast! sends
that on to the real SMTP server *without fixing it*, and of course the
server says "Bugger off, you're not localhost."


-- 
  Phil Stracchino, CDK#2     DoD#299792458     ICBM: 43.5607, -71.355
  alaric at caerllewys.net   alaric at metrocast.net   phil at co.ordinate.org
         Renaissance Man, Unix ronin, Perl hacker, Free Stater
                 It's not the years, it's the mileage.