issue with email - "zoneless date"
 

i'm getting the following error message when sending mail to a hotmail user.

Your message did not reach some or all of the intended recipients.

Subject: Unbelievable ending...
Sent: 7/28/2008 7:24 AM

The following recipient(s) could not be reached:

xxxxx xxxx on 7/28/2008 7:24 AM
553 5.3.0 <xxxxxxxx@hotmail.com>... IGNORE ZonelessDate


any ideas on how to resolve this?

thanks in advance.

Mentioning your mail server and setup would be useful.

Ahhhh, yes it would. Sendmail 8.13.8 running under Slackware 11.

I've noticed that when I look at the properties for emails sent by my server, there is no time zone info on the date line. On emails I receive from others, there is a time zone in parenthesis at the end of the line. How can I add this?

Since the error is coming from the remote MTA, we don't know exactly what triggers the reject. But ZonelessDate is most likely that your Date: header is not including a time zone. Examples of Date headers with time zone:

Date: Tue, 29 Jul 2008 17:40:58 -0400
Date: Tue, 29 Jul 2008 17:40:58 PST

The -0400 is the time zone offset, as is PST (Pacific Standard Time).

Check your Date headers from the sending agent (it is your MUA that should add the date). What MUA are you using to send the mail?

I'm not familiar with the term MUA, but if Google was good to me, then I think you are referring to Outlook. I'm using Outlook 2003 running under Windows XP.

If this isn't right, please explain what a "MUA is...

Sorry, it means Mail User Agent, the thingy that submits mail to a mail server. Outlook is an MUA.

Send yourself a message to see how the headers appear.

But again, this is just a guess at the error. Be sure to also check your mail logs for the actual error presented to the server by hotmail's servers.

Here is what Outlook is showing for the emails I send myself. As I said in my second post, no timezone is showing for the Date line.

Return-Path: <rick@rickscs.com>
Received: from desktop3 ([10.10.99.16])
(authenticated bits=0)
by Lserver1.com-guy.com (8.13.8/8.13.8) with ESMTP id m6TNDZRC007294
(version=TLSv1/SSLv3 cipher=RC4-MD5 bits=128 verify=NO)
for <tellis@rickscs.com>; Tue, 29 Jul 2008 18:13:35 -0500
Message-Id: <200807292313.m6TNDZRC007294@Lserver1.com-guy.com>
From: " Rick Ellis" <rick@rickscs.com>
To: <tellis@rickscs.com>
Subject: test
Date: Tue, 29 Jul 2008 18:12:45 -0500
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: multipart/alternative;
boundary="----=_NextPart_000_077F_01C8F1A6.B32C4FF0"
X-Mailer: Microsoft Office Outlook, Build 11.0.5510
X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V6.00.2900.5512
Thread-Index: Acjx0JvgMx63MfJXRO+Kiwezi5RpuA==


Here is the log for an email sent to a hotmail account that got bounced back.


Jul 29 18:16:59 Lserver1 sm-mta[7307]: STARTTLS=server, relay=[10.10.99.16], version=TLSv1/SSLv3, verify=NO, cipher=RC4-MD5,
bits=128/128
Jul 29 18:16:59 Lserver1 sm-mta[7307]: AUTH=server, relay=[10.10.99.16], authid=rick, mech=LOGIN, bits=0
Jul 29 18:16:59 Lserver1 sm-mta[7307]: m6TNGx22007307: ruleset=check_rcpt, arg1=<xxxxxxxxxxx@hotmail.com>, relay=[10.10.99.16]
, reject=553 5.3.0 <xxxxxxxxxx@hotmail.com>... IGNORE ZonelessDate
Jul 29 18:17:02 Lserver1 sm-mta[7307]: m6TNGx22007307: from=<rick@xxxxxxx.com>, size=0, class=0, nrcpts=0, proto=ESMTP, daemo

I'm a little confused by your statement that no timezone is showing for the Date header, and yet, we see:

Date: Tue, 29 Jul 2008 18:12:45 -0500

[ edit: incorrect math; 50 seconds, not 50 minutes ]
What I do notice from the headers is that your Date and Received headers are off by 50 minutes:

Tue, 29 Jul 2008 18:13:35 -0500 <- Received header
Tue, 29 Jul 2008 18:12:45 -0500 <- Date header

Get your PC and your server synchronized time wise. Note also that in both cases, time zone data is present.

Now, it appears that *your* server doing the rejecting, Apparently Sendmail added anti-spam rules some time ago to ignore dates w/out timezones: https://lists.sdsc.edu/pipermail/sen...st/000002.html

See: http://newsgroups.derkeiler.com/Arch.../msg00034.html

FYI: avoid using the term Bounce when you mean Reject. Both are valid mail terms and have distinct meanings. Bounce means Accepted and then later returned as undelivered, Reject means Not Accepted. Your message above was Rejected.

Mr. C, actually the time is only off by 50 seconds, not minutes. Thanks for the clarification on the "bounce" and "reject" terms. As to the time zone missing in the Date header, here is a copy paste of the date header from an email I received from JR.com today...

Date: Tue, 29 Jul 2008 01:39:37 -0400 (EDT)

notice the time zone in parenthesis at the end. That is what I was referring to.

Doh! I wasn't paying careful attention. Yes, 50 seconds, not minutes.

Right. I looked at some old sent mail from Outlook, and it does not include the zone abbreviation in parens. Nor does my Thunderbird either. Some MUA's will present it, some won't.

No matter, anything in parens after the timezone is optional, and should not be used for making reject decisions.

So what you want to do is tell Sendmail to ignore the missing paren'd zone abbreviation period. I'm not sure how that's done in Sendmail.

Mr. C, thanks for the help. You were right, it was my server doing the rejecting and i traced it to an entry in my access file for hotmail.com that was entered wrong. I can now send to hotmail.com users. Thanks again for the help.

Com-Guy