[oclug] symatico <> rogers mail help request (solved)

[Chris H]

Thanks for the help and to all who responded. The solution was rather 
simple. Sympatico's premium package uses the following server 
coordinates with ssl on both;

pophm.sympatico.ca
smtphm.sympatico.ca

Despite being on rogers these servers will only respond to sympatico 
customers for some reason via a direct connection.

Now here is the really weird part that has me totally confused. Read 
further only if intereted.

The primary accoount will only accept mail from a 'sympatico user' if 
sent directly via smtphm.sympatico.ca the condition being that a 
designated sympatico id is used & a premium msn account. All other 
incomming mail can come from anywhere but not the sympatico customer's 
email. It must be processed by smtphm.sympatico.ca

On the secondary accounts used for testing things are different however. 
I can send mail under that ID (and pop the accounts) from any random 
collection of smtp servers that I have access to and authorization to 
use. This was only possible however after carefully setting the spam 
filter which by default identifies all email as spam, even the account 
holders own address. Of course you must log on to your msn account's 
mail home page to discover this..:) Again no errors are ever reported 
from the mail server which identified itself at some point as an MS 
product, thanks to logs/headers generated in linux..:)

Totally bizar. Is there any reason for this configuration? as it makes 
no sence to me what so ever, not that I am savy with mail systems by any 
means. Secondly, in sending approx 50 test posts, non ever returned 
rather simply vanished into the either with no error messages what so 
ever or any form of feedback. Simple and systemtic trial and error, 
combined with brute force was needed to solve this one. Bell support 
would immediately disconnect if rogers was even mentioned. Great stuff.

/ch