Re: SMTP library problem

[David <de_bb@arcor.de>]

Stephen Berman <Stephen.Berman@gmx.net> writes:
>> Could it be that the SMTP server does ssmtp (usually on port 465)
>> instead of SMTP+STARTTLS? 
>
> The does indeed use port 465 (and I set smtpmail-smtp-service to 465).
> Are you saying that smtpmail.el does not support ssmtp?

I don't know, but I don't see any option to activate it.

>>                           Do you see a greeting message from the server
>> when you connect to it with telnet?
>
> No:
>
> $ telnet mail.myprovider.com
> Trying 123.456.78.9...
> telnet: connect to address 123.456.78.9: Connection timed out

I should have mentioned that you have to try the port you want to
connect to, i.e.

telnet mail.myprovider.com 465

> I know nothing about ssmtp.  Assuming the server does use it, is there a
> way to access it from Gnus?

ssmtp simply means that the TLS connection is established immediately,
whereas SMTP+STARTTLS first does the EHLO-stuff in clear text and the
TLS connection is only established if the server advertises it to the
client. AFAIK, ssmtp is more or less deprecated and servers support it
only because of MS Outlook. Nowadays, TLS connections are usually done on
the standard port 25, so this is the first you should try. You can test
this by using a tool like 'swaks' or simply with telnet:

telnet mail.myprovider.com 25

and after the greeting you type something like

EHLO my.address.com

and if the server answers

250-STARTTLS

it should work with smtpmail.el.

-David