CentOS - Mar 2008 - Rejecting valid mail (including this mailing list)

Recently, I added the below line to my sendmail.mc and rebuilt.  
Everything was working just fine until sometime today.  In looking over 
the maillog, it seems if almost every piece of mail was rejected because 
of this configuration - mail that I know is OK, valid, and not a source 
of spam, like tamu.edu.  Not only that, but the mailing list from centos 
was being rejected as well.  Anyone know what might be happening?  One 
link I ran across said that ordb.org went out of business or stopped 
their service in Dec of '06.  If that's the case, why is their info 
still being listed in some of the sendmail configs, and others still 
advertising it's use.

dnl # FEATURE(`dnsbl', `relays.ordb.org', `"550 Email rejected due
to
sending server misconfiguration - see 
http://www.ordb.org/faq/\#why_rejected"')dnl

Sam

Sam Drinkard wrote:
>                                                          One link I ran 
> across said that ordb.org went out of business or stopped their service in 
> Dec of '06.  If that's the case, why is their info still being
listed in
> some of the sendmail configs, and others still advertising it's use.
>
> dnl # FEATURE(`dnsbl', `relays.ordb.org', `"550 Email rejected
due to
> sending server misconfiguration - see 
> http://www.ordb.org/faq/\#why_rejected"')dnl
host relays.ordb.org comes back with 

Host relays.ordb.org not found: 3(NXDOMAIN)

So yes, that blacklist isn't there anymore. 

Why sendmail choses to block mails when the dnsbl isn't reachable should
be asked on some sendmail related list.

But: If you plan to use blacklists, you *really* should know *why* the
blacklist blocks *what* *when*, as you are letting *others* decide on
what to do with your mails. Which - IMNSHO - is plain stupid. 

So if you don't know what the blacklist is doing: DO NOT USE IT.

And if you're not really really really sure what you are doing regarding
that: Don't do it.

Cheers,

Ralph
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On Tue, 2008-03-25 at 18:03 -0400, Sam Drinkard wrote:
> Recently, I added the below line to my sendmail.mc and rebuilt.  
> Everything was working just fine until sometime today.  In looking over 
> the maillog, it seems if almost every piece of mail was rejected because 
> of this configuration - mail that I know is OK, valid, and not a source 
> of spam, like tamu.edu.  Not only that, but the mailing list from centos 
> was being rejected as well.  Anyone know what might be happening?  One 
> link I ran across said that ordb.org went out of business or stopped 
> their service in Dec of '06.  If that's the case, why is their info
> still being listed in some of the sendmail configs, and others still 
> advertising it's use.
> 
> dnl # FEATURE(`dnsbl', `relays.ordb.org', `"550 Email rejected
due to
> sending server misconfiguration - see 
> http://www.ordb.org/faq/\#why_rejected"')dnl
http://it.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/03/25/2124224

-- 
Ignacio Vazquez-Abrams <ivazqueznet at gmail.com>

PLEASE don't CC me; I'm already subscribed
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