FEATURE(accept_unresolvable_domains)

Beginning with V8.9, sendmail will refuse a mail message if the address specified as part of the SMTP MAIL From: has a domain part that cannot be looked up. For example, if the domain foo.bar does not exist, the following error will be logged with syslog and the message will be rejected with the same error message:

553 5.1.8 <user@your.domain>... Domain of sender address other@foo.bar does
not exist

If the domain cannot be looked up, the result is a temporary error:

451 4.1.8 <user@your.domain>... Domain of sender address other@foo.bar does
not resolve

We recommend rejecting such addresses, but there might be circumstances in which you cannot. If, for example, you are behind a firewall and lack access to full DNS lookups, you might want to accept everything. But if that is the case, you will need a sending mail hub with good DNS access so that you can reply to such messages.

You can accept such addresses by defining the FEATURE(accept_unresolvable_domains):

FEATURE(`accept_unresolvable_domains')

This tells sendmail to accept all envelope-sender addresses, even if the domain part following the @ cannot be looked up with DNS.

Get sendmail, 4th Edition now with the O’Reilly learning platform.

O’Reilly members experience books, live events, courses curated by job role, and more from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers.