First, please try to do it manually, like this: --- begin session ---- # telnet 127.0.0.1 25 Connected to .... 220 bla bla ehlo localhost 250 ok mail from: test@localhost 250 ok rcpt to: test@localhost data 354 test . 250 ok quit 221 bye Connection closed by foreign host # ---- here ends session ---- Of course, replace 127.0.0.1 with the addr. of the email server, and replace test@localhost with a valid email address. See if the problem persists. If it does, hmmm... maybe I shouldn't recommend this solution, since it is, effectively, bare bones.... What I do in these (extreme) cases is to run a strace(1) on the respective daemon. If you don't know what strace is, please read the man page. It basically shows every system call the respective program does. In the case of a daemon, you must run it like this: -telnet again to the port 25 on console 1 -on console 2, do on the email server a "ps -aux" and notice the PID of the smtp process just launched (it should be somewhere at the end of the listing) -on console 2,do strace -p <PID_OF_EMAIL_SERVER> -s 200 on console 1, start doing the session again and notice in the session 2 where (in between what functions) the smtp process is delaying.

Hope you manage - and good luck,

On Sat, 2002-04-27 at 03:30, Jeff Rosenberg wrote: