I am running SCO openserver 6 with sendmail as my mta I have a customer that sends me mail and occasionally some of them get bounced by my machine with a too many hops error. the header shows that it hops around their servers several times before getting to me and I know this is something that they should fix. but they will not and are telling me I need to fix it. they are a large customer and we do not want to lose them over something so trivial. the question is what can I do on my side to assure that I don't bounce there mails for too many hops?

update confMAX_HOP in the m4 file and rebuild the configuration or set MaxHopCount to the require larger value in the sendmail configuration file.

Hi and Thanks for the suggestion, I have tried this unfortunately the number of bounces these mails make varies greatly. I was looking for a way to exclude this server from doing the hops count.

the hop count stops email from hopping around forever...

it depends on who is sending you mail but a hop limit of 20 is a good starting number.

set it to 30, this should let in 99% of valid mail but still stop a mail from hopping around forever.