Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!lll-winken!ncis.tis.llnl.gov!helios.ee.lbl.gov!pasteur!ucbvax!RICHTER.MIT.EDU!krowitz
From: krowitz@RICHTER.MIT.EDU (David Krowitz)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.apollo
Subject: Re: mail
Message-ID: <8906082146.AA05019@richter.mit.edu>
Date: 8 Jun 89 21:46:05 GMT
Sender: daemon@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU
Organization: The Internet
Lines: 43

If the sendmail daemon is not running on the destination machine, 
the message you get is the following (use "mail -v" to see this):

$ mail -v krowitz@hess
Subject: test
abc
*** EOF *** 
Cc: 
krowitz@hess... Connecting to hess.tcp...
krowitz@hess... Deferred: Connection refused by hess

If the destination machine is not up, or is not running the
tcp/ip daemon (/etc/tcpd), the message you get is:

$ mail -v krowitz@hess
Subject: test
123
*** EOF *** 
Cc: 
krowitz@hess... Connecting to hess.tcp...
krowitz@hess... Deferred: Connection timed out during user open with hess


In general, tcp/ip based software will give you a "timed out"
message if the node is down, the tcp server is dead, or if an
intervening gateway is not routing the messages correctly. The
the server for the particular program you are using is not running
on the destination machine, then you get a "connection refused"
message. If your host tables don't have the machine, or if the
program you are using has a configuration file which is not set
up correctly, then you will get the "host not found/known" message.
Note that if your /etc/hosts table contains an IP number which is
incorrect, then you will also get a "connection timed out" error
due to the fact that the TCP/IP packets will have been misrouted.


 -- David Krowitz

krowitz@richter.mit.edu   (18.83.0.109)
krowitz%richter@eddie.mit.edu
krowitz%richter@athena.mit.edu
krowitz%richter.mit.edu@mitvma.bitnet
(in order of decreasing preference)