Empty AUTH=<> in SMTP from Mutt message causing refused mail

[Matthew Emmerton]

> On Mon, Sep 08, 2003 at 02:20:11PM -0500, Gary wrote:
> > Here is what I am thinking... 1. You mentioned you can send via other
> > MUAs, pine, etc, so I am inclined to think that your SMTP auth is set up
> > properly in Sendmail... 2. Given this, I still think it could be a Mutt
> > problem.. I think you are getting a null Auth return because Mutt is not
> > sending your password in order to auth the SMTP transaction, and it is
> > getting bounced.
>
> The only confusing thing there is that Mutt doesn't do anything to
> authenticate to SMTP; neither does Pine or any other mailer we use.
> Initially I wanted to set that up, but as things are now, we don't use
> that.  You could still be right; I must be overlooking something.
>
> > the only other thing I can think of, to rule out Sendmail as a cause, is
> > to log the entire SMTP transaction, say using Pine and Mutt with your
> > problem server.
>
> Here's a sample of that, from Mutt.  I replaced the company name in
> the banner with [companyName].
>
> 220 webshielde250.[companyName] WebShielde250/SMTP Ready.
> EHLO kirk.dlee.org
> 250-DSN
> 250-AUTH LOGIN
> 250-AUTH=LOGIN
> 250 ESMTP OK
> MAIL From:<dgl at dlee.org> AUTH=<>
> 501 Syntax error - badly formatted address
> quit
> 221 Closing connection
>
> The only difference from Pine is the " AUTH=<>" at the end of "MAIL
> From:" is not there, and it works...

Sendmail is barfing on the AUTH=<> clause.  Although allowed by the RFC
(http://www.faqs.org/rfcs/rfc2554.html), sendmail's refusal may well be
valid since you haven't actually entered authenticated SMTP mode. (In this
case, issuing a AUTH LOGIN before the MAIL FROM.)

The reason why your other MUAs work is beacuse they simply don't send the
AUTH=<> token if they're not doing authenticated SMTP.

--
Matt Emmerton