Note to Self: Invalid Internet address specified

I saw the following error in my Domino mail logs yesterday; right after a developer told me there was a problem because their e-mail wasn’t getting sent.

06/02/2008 10:52:39 PM Router: Transferring mail to domain GMAIL.COM (host gmail-smtp-in.l.google.COM [72.14.205.27]) via SMTP

06/02/2008 10:52:44 PM Router: Error transferring message 000FCE5B via SMTP to gmail-smtp-in.l.google.COM;alt1.gmail-smtp-in.l.google.COM,alt2.gmail-smtp-in.l.google.COM;gsmtp147.google.COM,gsmtp183.google.COM Invalid Internet address specified.

06/02/2008 10:53:15 PM Router: No messages transferred to GMAIL.COM (host gmail-smtp-in.l.google.COM) via SMTP

I’ll admit I was skeptical, as no one else was complaining about mail going through, but the application in question was the first one installed on a new server, so I took it at face value.

I ran some tests, tried to send e-mail from the application to a variety of e-mail accounts on different domains to see if it was a re-creatable problem, which it was. I googled “’Invalid Internet address specified’ & domino” to see what I could find, but everything I found related to internal Notes SMTP problems, but all my mail goes directly out to the internet.

I fiddled with various tests last night until I decided to go to bed. This morning at work it hit me. What is the “from” address on the e-mail?

Turns out that most mail servers will reject email coming from “@somedomain.com” without anything before the @ sign. I would have spotted that had I thought to check the memo document.

Oh well.