Paul W. Abrahams wrote:

During last weekend I encountered some extremely strange email-related behavior, and I'm wondering if it could be caused by some kind of network security hole. It seems that when I sent email to addresses at aol.com via my ISP, it simply dropped into a black hole. I got no rejection message of any kind; the only way I even knew there was a problem was that people at AOL told me they hadn't received mail that I verified I had sent to them. I was able to narrow the problem slightly by sending mail to fictitious AOL addresses like zzxqdec26a@aol.com, which would normally produce a ``no such user'' return message. I didn't get such a message.

The truly strange thing is that I could send mail to all my normal destinations other than AOL and it was received properly. Furthermore, I could send mail to AOL addresses from my Yahoo and Netscape accounts and it was received properly. It was as though there was a black hole somewhere on the path between my ISP and AOL that swallowed the email but didn't affect other paths. Whatever the problem, I did not encounter it today so I can no longer experiment with it.

Does anyone here have ideas as to what the problem might have been? This behavior is not just unlike any I've ever seen before; it's unlike any I've even heard of before.

Paul Abrahams

I was having that problem, too (University of Hawaii black holes, not AOL). That was one reason I set up my mail server. If so-and-so said they did not receive my e-mail, I could check my mail log for the message receipt entry. If you are using sendmail as your Mail Transport Agent, it will log receipt of the message. That way you can prove it arrived at AOL and tell them the date, time, and message ID. On the other hand, if AOL never acknowledges receipt, you'll know that, too. -- George Toft http://www.georgetoft.com -- To unsubscribe send e-mail to suse-linux-e-unsubscribe@suse.com For additional commands send e-mail to suse-linux-e-help@suse.com Also check the FAQ at http://www.suse.com/Support/Doku/FAQ/