Can using mod_auth affect my ability to send e-mail?

Forum Moderators: phranque

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Can using mod_auth affect my ability to send e-mail?

It seems to be...

mipapage

11:14 pm on Dec 19, 2003 (gmt 0)

This is what happens when you play with big toys.

Monkeying with a couple of severs here and things are starting to go weird.

When I have this...

AuthName "Why are you here?" 
AuthType Basic 
AuthUserFile /a location 
require valid-user

...in my htaccess file, for some reason I can't send e-mail. When I remove it, I can. Why?
the mod_auth is working fine.

mipapage

2:21 pm on Dec 20, 2003 (gmt 0)

If not why, then is there a workaround, has anyone else experiencd this?

jdMorgan

4:45 pm on Dec 20, 2003 (gmt 0)

Look in your server logs for the 401-Authorization Required related to e-mail. This might give us a clue. It sounds like you have protected a URL-path needed by your server's sendmail program, but that's just a guess, since you didn't say.

Jim

mipapage

5:25 pm on Dec 20, 2003 (gmt 0)

jdMorgan,

thanks for giving me a clue - I never remember to check my logs; this I have to chisel into my head.

Anyway, I have not been able to create any errors in my logs related to e-mail - that is, when e-mail gets bounced I have not seen anything appended to the logs (either error or access).

If I turn off the server, or remove the htaccess info I posted above, mail goes thru, otherwise I get this returned to me (shoulda posted this before...):

Your message did not reach some or all of the intended recipients. 
 Subject:blah 
 Sent:20/12/2003 6:14 PM 
The following recipient(s) could not be reached: 
 'avalidemailaddy@domain.com' on 20/12/2003 6:14 PM 
 550 relaying to <avalidemailaddy@domain.com> prohibited by administrator

Does that give any clues?

mipapage

1:32 am on Dec 21, 2003 (gmt 0)

Look in your server logs

192.****.x.xx - - [20/Dec/2003:17:23:13 -0800] "OPTIONS / HTTP/1.1" 401 23 
192.****.x.xx - "" [20/Dec/2003:17:23:14 -0800] "OPTIONS / HTTP/1.1" 401 23

This may be an error that gets recorded when trying to send. Soo frustrating - I am not accessing the server, yet this shows up in the logs. Wrt e-mail, there is no 1:1 correlation between the e-mail bouncing and the logs recording.

Learning a lot about e-mail though!

Probably worth mentioning that, for what I know (and that's not much) I'm sending my e-mail through my ISP, not from sendmail or anything.

jdMorgan

2:40 am on Dec 21, 2003 (gmt 0)

In those log file entries, whose IP address(es) are those? Are they your home or work computer (the one you're on right now), your server, your ISP's addresses, whose? Also, what computer are you sending mail from, and is that the same as your server? All this stuff needs to be considered.

For purposes of motivation, *if* those 401s are being sent in response to requests by a computer that is some part of your mail-sending chain, then it should be possible to bypass authorization under those specific circumstances. But before trying to figure out how to fix the problem, let's nail down the definition of the problem first.

As to *why* this is happening -- I haven't a clue! :o

Jim

One of the advantages of having to read all the posts in this forum every day is that I learn a lot... :)

mipapage

3:00 am on Dec 21, 2003 (gmt 0)

jdMorgan,

Thanks for the time and responses. It seems that I did something bad in a past life, because mail seems to be going fine now.

I have no idea why, what I do know is that for a day and a quarter I couldn't send mail if I was using mod_auth in an htaccess file in the root of the server - I'd remove it and it would work. Now it seems to work fine either way. Ugh.

Anyway, on to the next problem!