Hi-

I'm running sendmail 8.13 and using a set of dnsbl entries to block
spam. I've enabled delay_checks so that check_mail and check_relay are
called on RCPT TO.

I've recently noticed that hotmail.com servers disconnect abruptly
after the RCPT TO, even though I didn't issue a 550/reject. I suspect
that they are timing out while I'm doing the dnsbl lookups. When I add
an entry to whhitelist hotmail.com in /etc/access (so that the dnsbl
tests are bypassed) I receive mail properly.

Does anyone have ideas as to a better fix than whitelisting
hotmail.com? Maybe a way to set the maximum time I will wait for a
dnsbl server to respond (so I time out slow servers?)? Any idea what
their timeout is set to?


The error I get is:

>Jan 18 06:48:16 memnoch sendmail[16223]: l0IBkPm5016223: lost input
>channel from bay0-omc1-s4.bay0.hotmail.com [65.54.246.76] to MTA
>after rcpt
>
>Jan 18 06:48:16 memnoch sendmail[16223]: l0IBkPm5016223:
>from=<xxx@msn.com>, size=0, class=0, nrcpts=1, proto=ESMTP,
>daemon=MTA, relay=bay0-omc1-s4.bay0.hotmail.com [65.54.246.76]

Thanks,

Lou