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I'd like to confirm the meaining of a mail failure notice. Here's the message

Hi. This is the qmail-send program at mydomain.com
I'm afraid I wasn't able to deliver your message to the following addresses.
This is a permanent error; I've given up. Sorry it didn't work out.

<user@domain.com>:
1.2.3.4 does not like recipient.
Remote host said: 554 <user@domain.com>: Relay access denied
Giving up on 1.2.3.4

The way I understand this is, that 1.2.3.4 is not setup to receive mail for this domain.

dig domain.com MX shows

;; ANSWER SECTION:
domain.com.     6245    IN  MX  10 mail.domain.com.
domain.com.     6245    IN  MX  20 mx.anotherdomain.com.

(1.2.3.4 is mx.anotherdomain.com.).

The puzzling part is that I have reports that messages sent from gmail get delivered to this address.

P.S. Is this a proper question for serverfault?

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+1 for obfuscation of your real domain in the question (as it shows you have security in mind for your site) – PP. Mar 26 '10 at 9:55
Maybe he actually owns and administrates domain.com and mydomain.com :) – fenix Mar 26 '10 at 10:47
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1 Answer

up vote 1 down vote accepted

It means to deliver the mail 1.2.3.4 would have to pass it on to another mailserver (because 1.2.3.4 is not the final destination) and it does not want to do that.

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thanks, that's how I understood it. any explanation on why it would work from gmail? (my suspicion is that one of the servers in MX works correctly) – Unreason Mar 26 '10 at 10:08
Gmail's SMTP senders may be configured as authorized relay sources, on the mail server at 1.2.3.4. – Chris Thorpe Mar 26 '10 at 10:54
Thanks Chris, that makes it clear – Unreason Mar 26 '10 at 13:07
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