In trying out 1.0b4 on python.org i discovered a logistical conflict with the sendmail 8 anti-spam non-relaying mechanism - it *may* be due to a fault in my implementation of it, but i thought it's worth giving people a heads up.

For those of you unfamiliar with it, it's a measure that tells sendmail to restrict the set of hosts from and to which it will accept mail relays. See http://www.sendmail.org/antispam.html for more info. It's something that public sites that handle mail should in good consience do - it reduces spammer's options for concealing their message origins.

My problem was that mail delivered via mailman on my site to sites not explicitly specified as acceptable recipients (in the /etc/RelayTo file, i think) were being rejected. I would have thought that the mail appeared to originate at python.org, which is in the RelayTo and LocalIP files, and so would be accepted, but no go - and i don't see a way to wildcard the RelayTo to enable any recipients.

I would not be surprised if i'm missing a fairly easy way to configure the setup to accept these messages, but i'm not sure, and don't have the time right now to investigate (i was supposed to go out of town, for the weekend, earlier today.) I disabled the anti-relay mechanism for the moment, but wanted to ask if anyone out there has experience with this, and suggestions for making the direct port 25 connection work without disabling the anti-relay measures.

Ken