Reg.SMTP Error while using UTL_MAIL in Oracle 10g

Question

Hi,
I am getting the following SMTP error while trying to use the UTL.MAIL package of Oracle 10g. The query is as follows.
begin
utl_mail.send(
sender => 'NAVEEN',
recipients => '[email protected]',
subject => 'Testing utl_mail',
message => 'The receipt of this email means'|| ' that UTL_MAIL works'
end;
UTL_MAIL package is installesd and the port 25 is configured and firewall is changed.
The same block was working fine before 5 days and now is giving the error as
ORA-29279: SMTP permanent error: 501 badly formatted MAIL FROM user - no "<"
ORA-06512: at "SYS.UTL_SMTP", line 21
ORA-06512: at "SYS.UTL_SMTP", line 99
ORA-06512: at "SYS.UTL_SMTP", line 222
ORA-06512: at "SYS.UTL_MAIL", line 407
ORA-06512: at "SYS.UTL_MAIL", line 594
ORA-06512: at line 2
Could you please help me out how to proceed???
Regards,
Naveen Kumar.

Answer 1

Can you back that statement about an Oracle UTL_SMTP bug up with an actual bug number??
From what you have posted, this is not a bug!! but expected and documented (RFC'ed) SMTP server behaviour.
My proof:
/home/billy> telnet mail 25
Trying 165.143.128.26...
Connected to mail
Escape character is '^]'.
220 CNTRRA20-GTW01 [CNTRRA20-GTW01] Thu, 06 Mar 2008 14:26:26 +0200
HELO 10.251.93.58
250 CNTRRA20-GTW01 Hello [10.251.93.58]
MAIL FROM: naveen <[email protected]>
501 naveen <[email protected]> : illegal character(s) in domain string
MAIL FROM: NAVEEN
501 NAVEEN : domain string is NULL.
quit
221 CNTRRA20-GTW01 closing connection. Goodbye!
Connection closed by foreign host.
/home/billy>
As you can clearly see, the SMTP server expects a DOMAIN name as part of the MAIL FROM address. It also does not accept the alternative format suggested.
Yes, not all SMTP servers are equal and some support additional formatting.
But to imply that because the SMTP server does not accept your address formatted as string NAVEEN, it is a UTL_SMTP problem, sounds like a smelly one to me.