Sendmail on a multihomed server...

[Tom Buskey]

> That's not quite it. The problem is that when sendmail on the server
> makes a connection to AOL's server, it does so from an IP address that
> AOL thinks is an open relay, and rejects delivery of the mail. I have
> fixed the apparent open relay problem, but AOL still has that IP address
> blacklisted. There are other IP addresses assigned to that server, but
> Sendmail still prefers the primary one assigned to eth0. The others are
> assigned to eth0:1, eth0:2, etc.
>
> It is becoming apparent that Sendmail does not have a way to bind an
> outgoing connection to a particular IP address, but relies on the kernel
> to make that decision through the routing tables. So, comma, I am going
> to have to modify the routing tables on that server, it seems -- but
> since that server is remote and is a money maker, I am loathe to do
> anything to the routing tables at all. Another approach is to juggle the
> IP address assignments on the NICs, but I am loathe to do that as well
> for the same reasons.

I'm in AOL's list becausemy server is in comcast's dynamic IP space. 
Similar issue.

I'm running sendmail on RH9.  Here's my solution:

cd /etc/mail
cat >mailertable <<EOF
aol.com esmtp:smtp.comcast.net
netscape.net esmtp:smtp.comcast.net
earthlink.net esmtp:smtp.comcast.net
rcn.net esmtp:smtp.comcast.net
rcn.com esmtp:smtp.comcast.net
prodigy.net esmtp:smtp.comcast.net
sbcglobal.net esmtp:smtp.comcast.net
bbn.com esmtp:smtp.comcast.net
monster.com esmtp:smtp.comcast.net
zoneedit.com esmtp:smtp.comcast.net
EOF

make mailertable.db
/etc/init.d/sendmail restart

Now, anytime I try to email @aol.com, it gets relayed through comcast's
official server which AOL allows.  Anything not on the list gets sent
direct from my server.

I suspect you don't need to deal with IPs and routing, etc......

AOL doesn't listen to complaints much.  I had an intermittant issue
sending to an @aol.com account w/ one of my users a few years back.  It
turns out, from my end, AOL had a misconfigured server, 1 of 8.  If the
email went through that one, it bounced.  The other 7 were fine.  AOL
never acknowledged the problem.