Xref: utzoo comp.protocols.tcp-ip:6871 comp.mail.misc:1812
Path: utzoo!utgpu!attcan!uunet!lll-winken!csd4.milw.wisc.edu!leah!rpi!batcomputer!cornell!rochester!pt.cs.cmu.edu!andrew.cmu.edu!cfe+
From: cfe+@andrew.cmu.edu (Craig F. Everhart)
Newsgroups: comp.protocols.tcp-ip,comp.mail.misc
Subject: Re: smtp problem: remote protocol error: bad file number
Message-ID: <EYHpjly00VsL0B9adG@andrew.cmu.edu>
Date: 21 Apr 89 16:50:57 GMT
References: <3074@ursa-major.SPDCC.COM>
Organization: Information Technology Center, Carnegie Mellon, Pittsburgh, PA
Lines: 17
In-Reply-To: <3074@ursa-major.SPDCC.COM>

You're seeing a misleading error message.  ``bad file number'' is a
representation of what was left in errno (EBADF) after an SMTP connection went
south; the connection is closed, but sendmail doesn't know it, so it does a
``close()'' anyway, leaving bad stuff in the global variable ``errno''.  An
ostensible fix for this was posted to comp.mail.sendmail about a month ago,
involving saving and restoring the errno value across a pair of close()
operations.

Unfortunately, that errno-clobber is masking the original errno value, which is
doubtless something like ETIMEDOUT or ECONNREFUSED.  Too bad your error-handler
is interpreting the EBADF as a permanent/persistent error rather than a
transient one.

Once you find out what the network problem is, you'll have to deal with your
network/gateway support to find out why you can't get to some hosts.

                Craig