[6155] in Athena Bugs
decmips 7.1H: sendmail
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (marc@ATHENA.MIT.EDU)
Wed Oct 3 00:46:16 1990
From: marc@ATHENA.MIT.EDU
To: bugs@ATHENA.MIT.EDU
Cc: postmaster@mit.edu, postmaster@ATHENA.MIT.EDU
Date: Wed, 03 Oct 90 00:45:32 EDT
System name: hodge
Type and version: KN01 7.1H (1 update(s) to same version)
Display type: PM-MONO
What were you trying to do?
Write an SMTP client.
What's wrong:
The sendmail's running on athena.mit.edu and mit.edu deviate from
RFC821. Sample session:
<21> hodge:~> telnet athena.mit.edu 25
Trying...
Connected to athena.mit.edu.
Escape character is '^]'.
220 ATHENA.MIT.EDU Sendmail, or BOBO? 5.61/1.2 ready at Wed, 3 Oct 90 00:34:41 EDT
EXPN
NOOP
200 OK
QUIT
221 ATHENA.MIT.EDU closing connection
Connection closed by foreign host.
Problem 1: an EXPN with no argument generates no response. A
response, at least an error, is required for any query. From the RFC:
The communication between the sender and receiver is intended to
be an alternating dialogue, controlled by the sender. As such,
the sender issues a command and the receiver responds with a
reply. The sender must wait for this response before sending
further commands.
My code was spinning waiting for a response which was never going to come.
Problem 2: NOOP returns the wrong status code. Command-reply sequence
from the RFC:
NOOP
S: 250
E: 500, 421
sendmail returns code 200, not 250, as it should. This isn't a
catastrophe, but it is wrong.
What should have happened:
sendmail should follow the spec
Please describe any relevant documentation references:
/afs/athena/contrib/rfc/RFC821.TXT
