I didn’t do this myself so I can’t vouch for it, but there was a recent discussion on one of the mailing lists I’m on about getting Sendmail to work with Rogers Smarthost settings.

Apparently this howto:

http://www.newthink.net/2007/05/18/smarthost-authentication-with-sendmail/

Will get you going, but there is one critical change you must make as determined by the Hugo on the mailing list.

Don’t forget to use smtp-rog.mail.yahoo.com in authinf and not smtp.broadband.rogers.com!

Also, if you want to use an external authinfo file, add this to your sendmail.mc file.

FEATURE(\`authinfo', \`hash -o /etc/mail/authinfo.db')dnl

Again, I didn’t try this myself, but I know some of you use Rogers and this may come in handy.

Another Reference on SMTP and Rogers Smarthost with Sendmail is here.

Comments

Comment by Ash Christopher on 2008-11-10 20:47:28 -0500

Hi Matt,

Thanks for the link. I used my setup with rogers without problems for a few months before switching to another service provider due to what I feel was very bad customer service (I am with Teksavvy now – definitely recommend).

Did Hugo mention why he recommended using smtp-rog.mail.yahoo.com over the others listed at http://www.dslreports.com/faq/rogers/5_Email#5090 ?

Ash Christopher

Comment by Matt G on 2008-11-10 21:38:43 -0500

Hi Ash,

I believe it was from the additional information post at the bottom of the article. They mention in the posts there:

**
Nov 2 11:53:56 pbx sendmail[2917]: mA2Gru4B002915: to=, ctladdr= (0/0), delay=00:00:00, xdelay=00:00:00, mailer=relay, pri=120318, relay=smtp-rog.mail.yahoo.com. [206.190.36.18], dsn=5.0.0, stat=Service unavailable

The delivery attempt went to the server smtp-rog.mail.yahoo.com.

So, I’m assuming that while you usually use smtp.broadband.rogers.com, the server actual returns smtp-rog.mail.yahoo.com so it won’t match your sendmail configuration for authinfo when it tries to connect.

You could always try each and if one doesn’t work then you know 🙂

HTH,
Matt

Comment by Ash Christopher on 2008-11-10 22:05:33 -0500

Matt, both smtp-rog.mail.yahoo.com and smtp.broadband.rogers.com allow access to the cluster of mail servers that Rogers uses. When connecting to smtp.broadband.rogers.com you are infact connecting to smtp-rog.mail.yahoo.com – it is just a CNAME.

21:58 ash@galactica:[~]> dig smtp.broadband.rogers.com
–snip–
;; ANSWER SECTION:
smtp.broadband.rogers.com. 3402 IN CNAME ssmtp.bloor.is.net.cable.rogers.com.
ssmtp.bloor.is.net.cable.rogers.com. 86202 IN CNAME smtp-rog.mail.yahoo.com.
smtp-rog.mail.yahoo.com. 1602 IN A 206.190.36.18

21:59 ash@galactica:[~]> dig smtp-rog.mail.yahoo.com
–snip–
smtp-rog.mail.yahoo.com. 1526 IN A 206.190.36.18

When testing connections to either dns entry, you get access to any number of smtp servers in their farm.

smtp105.rog.mail.re2.yahoo.com
smtp111.rog.mail.re2.yahoo.com
smtp126.rog.mail.re2.yahoo.com

and so on. I don’t believe one or the other has anything to do with authentication per se. You will still need to authenticate.

I do wonder though if smtp.broadband.rogers.com resolves depending on your geographic location (just hazarding a guess based on the CNAME ssmtp.bloor.is.net.cable.rogers.com).

Comment by Matt on 2008-11-11 00:03:43 -0500

Good point yeah. I bet it’s GEOIP.

I didn’t mean you don’t have to authenticate, just that the server you’re authenticating to must be the same in the authinfo config (however, like I said, I haven’t tried this, that’s just what I got from the posts).

Thanks!
Matt