GroupWise Internet Agent Errors
Articles and Tips: qna
01 Mar 2003
Q.
I am having some weird email woes. For the most part, my shop is running Novell GroupWise, but you know, there are those who favor their favorites! For some strange reason the GroupWise Internet Agent (GWIA) is rejecting messages sent by a HP-UX host that is capable of running Extended Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (ESMTP) when it executes SendMail. The error I get is as follows:
Error:"[MAIL FROM: <userid@domain.com> ENVID=252248][501 Syntax error.]
If an esmtp conversation is started with "HELO" GWIA will not accept "envid=", a "501 error" is returned. If an esmtp conversation is started with "EHLO" GWIA will accept "envid=". I have just recently upgraded to GroupWise v6.02 from GroupWise v5.5.7.1.
Visiting Errors on Erymanthos
A.
Dear Visiting Errors: This problem is caused by the ENVID parameter. The ENVID parameter, although handled by GroupWise v5.5, is not a parameter that should be used in a normal SMTP session. In the RFC 1891, there is a portion about what the ENVID keyword does. Note that it is a keyword for an "ESMTP session," which sessions must start with "ehlo" and not "helo."
The ENVID "esmtp-keyword" of the SMTP MAIL command is used to specify an "envelopeidentifier" to be transmitted along with the message and included in any DSNs that are issued to any of the recipients named in this SMTP transaction. The purpose of the identifier is to allow the sender of a message to identify the transaction for which the DSN was issued. The ABNF for the ENVID parameter is:
envid-parameter = "ENVID"=xtext
The ENVID esmtp-keyword must have an associated estmp-value. No meaning is assigned by the mail system to the presence or absence of this parameter or to any esmtp-value that is associated with this parameter. The information is used only by the sender or his user agent. The EVID parameter may be up to 100 characters in length.
So the fix is to modify the sending application so that the "envid=" parameter is an ESMTP session keyword, and is not sent in a normal SMTP Mail session.
* Originally published in Novell AppNotes
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