outgoing mail not authenticated

Running devuan, mutt and exim4. For no obvious reason, outgoing mail failed.

I send a message to myself with

$ echo "test" | mail -s Testing haines@histomat.net

Although I thought mail speaks to sendmail rather than exim, in exim log is:

2019-06-04 02:57:13 1hY3Nh-0007fn-3o <= haines@marx.histomat.net
  U=haines P=local S=409

2019-06-04 02:57:13 1hY3Nh-0007fn-3o ** haines@histomat.net
  R=smarthost T=remote_smtp_smarthost
  H=mail.historicalmaterialism.info
  [216.239.133.246]: SMTP error from remote mail server after pipelined
  MAIL FROM:<haines@histomat.net> SIZE=1444: 550 5.7.1
  <unknown[32.210.114.254]>: Client host rejected: Authentication
  failed, please enable SMTP Authentication in your email client

2019-06-04 02:57:13 1hY3Nh-0007fq-S4 <= <> R=1hY3Nh-0007fn-3o
  U=Debian-exim P=local S=2145
  2019-06-04 02:57:13 1hY3Nh-0007fn-3o Completed
  2019-06-04 02:57:14 1hY3Nh-0007fq-S4 => haines
  <haines@marx.histomat.net> R=local_user T=mail_spool

2019-06-04 02:57:14 1hY3Nh-0007fq-S4 Completed

Same problem if I send to an alternative address or if send by a different user, by root, or by user on the operating system on another disk.

# iptables -L

Chain INPUT (policy ACCEPT)

target     prot opt source               destination

Chain FORWARD (policy ACCEPT)

target     prot opt source               destination

Chain OUTPUT (policy ACCEPT)

target prot opt source destination

In /etc/exim4/passwd.client I have:

*:brownh@historicalmaterialism.info:<pw>

*:haines@historicalMaterialism.info:<pw>

*:haines@histomat.net:<pw>

Haines Brown

Posted 2019-06-04T10:33:15.283

Reputation: 11

/usr/{lib,sbin}/sendmail is exim, isn't it? – user1686 – 2019-06-04T10:37:13.373

Please modify the SPF record of sender domain to : spf1 a mx include:spf.guardedhost.com ~all and check. – Nikhil_CV – 2019-06-04T13:49:20.213

I use my ISP's mail server. The message composed in mutt is sent via exim to port 25 and thence to my ISP. 's mail server. I assume that modification of SPF record would refer to the remote mail sever. – Haines Brown – 2019-06-04T15:20:30.910

My ISP said my mail utility needed to support authentication of outgoing mail. This would be my exim4. Although it strikes me as suited to an apache mail server, I carefully imlemented HowTo_Setup_Basic_SMTP_AUTH_in_Exim4. However, my outgoing mail has the same error message – Haines Brown – 2019-06-04T18:01:54.327

I suspect the issue is to enable ACL authentication in exim. However, it seems enabled by default: in /etc/exim4/conf.d/ there is an acl and a auth directory. In the latter is 00_exim4-config_header, which has the line "begin authenticators". In the acl directory is The file 00_exim4-config_header. It has the line "begin acl'
File 30_exim4-config_check_mail has the lines: "acl_check_mail: accept". – Haines Brown – 2019-06-04T19:22:36.367

outgoing mail not authenticated

No answers