home | list info | list archive | date index | thread index

[OCLUG-Tech] Rogers SMTP Setup using Sendmail

Several years ago, Rogers began blocking SMTP to block their Customers
from hosting spam sites.  They have never documented a generic set of
instructions on what it takes to get through their firewall, and refused
to let you talk to their AIX admins to get a functioning setup.  You
could not send mail through Rogers, except when using one of a few
sanctioned Windows-only MUAs.

So, since that time, I have not been able to use an MTA to send mail,
and have had to resort to using more simplistic  MUA connection like
Windows does.  The biggest downside was that automatic mails would not
works anymore, so I had to resort to a tunnel to work to send out my
home security alert mails, etc. to actually get them to their intended
destinations.

I finally got my mail smarthost to Rogers working, thanks to the pointer
for configuring postfix from Khalil, and an ancient mail from the OCLUG
mailing list (thanks Jeff).  The sendmail config to work around the
Rogers idiocy is simple but non-obvious.

I use Fedora at home, but the tricks for Solaris, Centos, RedHat and a
few other platforms that use sendmail should be the same.

I uncommented the following in sendmail.mc:

	# Edit the following line if your outgoing mail needs to
	# be sent out through an external mail server:
	#
	define(`SMART_HOST', `smtp.broadband.rogers.com')dnl

	. . .

	# Causes sendmail to additionally listen to port 587 for
	# mail from MUAs that authenticate. Roaming users who
	# can't reach their preferred sendmail daemon due to
	# port 25 being blocked or redirected find this useful.
	#
	DAEMON_OPTIONS(`Port=submission, Name=MSA, M=Ea')dnl

Then, I added authentication to the access source file:

	AuthInfo:smtp-rog.mail.yahoo.com "U:<rogers id>" "P:<rogers passwd>"
"M:PLAIN"

and rebuilt sendmail.cf and access.db by typing:

	make

and restarted sendmail.

Mail using my sendmail MTA instead of directly from an MUA now works.

Thanks Khalid and Jeff!