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From: murrey@lehi3b15.csee.Lehigh.EDU (Erik Murrey)
Newsgroups: comp.mail.misc
Subject: Re: smtp problem:  remote protocol error: bad file number
Message-ID: <556@lehi3b15.csee.Lehigh.EDU>
Date: 25 Apr 89 02:13:25 GMT
References: <3074@ursa-major.SPDCC.COM> <3075@fnatte.cs.chalmers.se>
Reply-To: murrey@csee.Lehigh.EDU (Erik Murrey)
Organization: CSEE Dept. Lehigh University, Bethlehem, PA
Lines: 31

In article <3075@fnatte.cs.chalmers.se> lindberg@cs.chalmers.se (Gunnar Lindberg) writes:
>In article <3074@ursa-major.SPDCC.COM> eli@ursa-major.SPDCC.COM
>(Steve Elias) writes:
>>if anyone has any idea as to what i could do to fix the above error, 
>
>As cfe+@andrew.cmu.edu (Craig F. Everhart) replies, the "bad file
>number" message is rather misleading, but look at the other message,
>"remote protocol error". It could be that the machine tries to talk
>"sendmail-smtp", using only <LF> (or <NL> in UNIX terms) instead of
>the RFC821-required <CR><LF> as line terminator. We've had this
>problem when talking to DEC20/TOPS20 machines, e.g. SRI-NIC.ARPA.
>

Actually, sendmail always prints the error message for the current
value of errno when it prints any error.  The "bad file number" was
probably the errno value sitting around when the "protocol error"
occured.

If you are surprised, then re-check the intro message to your UNIX C
Library.  "errno" is not garunteed to be zero when an error hasn't
occured...


... Erik
---

-- 
Erik Murrey
Lehigh University
murrey@csee.Lehigh.EDU
erik@mpx.com