Problem with smtplib: 550 'Administrative prohibition'

[Daren Russell]

Wayne Pierce wrote:

> I have a script that checks a POP3 mailbox and sends the emails to
> different people based upon some settings.  For some reason my script
> cannot send any emails, the error I am getting is:
> 
> reply: '550 Administrative prohibition\r\n'
> reply: retcode (550); Msg: Administrative prohibition
> data: (550, 'Administrative prohibition')
> send: 'rset\r\n'
> reply: '250 Reset OK\r\n'
> reply: retcode (250); Msg: Reset OK
> 
> The only post on GG I could find says this may be caused by a conflict
> with Sendmail[1].  Does anyone know if this is true?  Even better,
> does anyone know a way around this?  The machine this is running on is
> hosted, so I cannot remove Sendmail or make any system-wide changes.
> :(
> 
> Thanks for any help,
> 
> Wayne
> 
> [1]
> [http://groups.google.com/groups?q=%27Administrative+prohibition%27+
>smtplib+group:comp.lang.python.*&hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&group=comp.lang.
>python.*&selm=exrsc.16505%24SQ2.3515%40edtnps89&rnum=1  

It sounds like the SMTP server thinks you are trying to relay the email
(i.e. you're not actually authorised to use it)  This could be down to
having to use SMTP-AUTH to send via that server, or it could be the server
only accepts connections from within its dial-up pool and you are sending
from outside this.

Basically, it's more likely down to the way you are accessing the server
rather than smtplib itself (your code may be giving a bad from address
during the smtp session for example)

HTH
Daren