Re: SMTP library problem

[Stephen Berman <Stephen.Berman@gmx.net>]

On Thu, 06 Mar 2008 00:03:45 +0100 David <de_bb@arcor.de> wrote:

> 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

With this I get the same results as with smtpmail.el:

$ telnet mail.myprovider.com 465
Trying 123.456.78.9...
Connected to mail.myprovider.com.
Escape character is '^]'.
454 TLS connection failed: timed out (#4.3.0)
Connection closed by foreign host.

>> 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.

Telnetting to port 25 just times out as above with no port.  I also
tried swaks:

$ swaks -s mail.myprovider.com
To: stephen.berman@gmx.net
=== Trying mail.myprovider.com:25...
*** Error connecting 0.0.0.0 to mail.myprovider.com:25:
*** 	IO::Socket::INET: connect: timeout
$ swaks -s mail.myprovider.com -p 465
To: stephen.berman@gmx.net
=== Trying mail.myprovider.com:465...
=== Connected to mail.myprovider.com.
<** Timeout (30 secs) waiting for server response
 -> QUIT
<** Timeout (30 secs) waiting for server response
=== Connection closed with remote host.

Again, I can send and receive mail via this server using KMail, which I
set up simply by providing the server's FQDN and my user name (KMail
figured out the port and authorization method and prompts for my
password).  So I expected (and still hope) there's some way to access it
with Gnus.

Steve Berman