Re: TLS smpt encryption

[Phillip Lord <phillip.lord@newcastle.ac.uk>]

>>>>> "SJ" == Simon Josefsson <jas@extundo.com> writes:


  SJ> I've seen it suggested that people have had success on Windows
  SJ> using the starttls binary instead of gnutls-cli.  But I don't
  SJ> really know what works under Windows, so I don't know how to
  SJ> improve things here.
  >> 
  >> The problem is with your process handling.
  >> 
  >> (signal-process (process-id process) 'SIGALRM)
  >> 
  >> wont work.

  SJ> Why not?  Wouldn't that a bug in NTEmacs?

  >> If you are using the cygwin gnutls, then this can be faked using
  >> "kill" directly, but NTEmacs cannot send this signal, at least to
  >> my knowledge.

  SJ> If "kill" can do it, then probably NTEmacs could too.  And
  SJ> NTEmacs probably should do that, especially if `signal-process'
  SJ> doesn't do anything useful at all under Windows.  However, some
  SJ> NTEmacs person should answer this.


No. "kill" in question is cygwin kill, which NTEmacs doesn't know
about. NTEmacs is a windows process, so only knows how to send windows
process signals. As far as I know, windows doesn't do SIGALRM -- I
could be wrong. I try not to get this close to the OS where ever
possible. 



  >> I might try starttls, but in general, its easier to have as few
  >> extraneous binaries as possible, hence the desire to use
  >> 
  >> If TLS is compatible with SSL, would it not possible to use the
  >> SSL binaries. As I say, the IMAP code works fine using SSL?

  SJ> IMAP uses the same library, starttls.el, as SMTP.  So they are
  SJ> already using the same tools.  Btw, IMAP uses TLS, strictly
  SJ> speaking.


No, I don't think you are right. From the Gnus/imap documentation. 

        * "tls:" Connect through TLS.  Requires GNUTLS (the program
          `gnutls-cli').

        * "ssl:" Connect through SSL.  Requires OpenSSL (the program
          `openssl') or SSLeay (`s_client').


So, I am using OpenSSL not tls, nor gnutls-cli to communicate with my
IMAP server. The communication layer works fine here. Certainly, my
imap connections worked fine without gnutls-cli being installed. 




  >> Yep. Once everwhere goes, I can no longer send email with
  >> emacs. I spent 6 months on outlook this year and the experience
  >> was, er, less than optimal, shall I say.

  SJ> Many people have migrated to SMTP over TLS with Emacs too, I
  SJ> remember writing the first support for this in Emacs around 2000
  SJ> to 2001 somewhere, and many used it successfully even back then.


Under windows?

Phil