Re: mail: Sending...failed with exit value 71

[Glenn Morris <gmorris+news@ast.cam.ac.uk>]

gebser@speakeasy.net wrote:

> = > = (setq message-send-mail-function 'smtpmail-send-it  ; for Gnus
> = > =       send-mail-function 'smtpmail-send-it          ; for other things
>
> Yep.  What I had.  And still have.

Something is very broken if Emacs with those settings is trying to
use sendmail to, err, send mail.

> = > =       smtpmail-smtp-server "your.mail.server")
>
> The arg here-- assuming a dynamic connection-- would be the remote
> machine's (ISP's) server.  I.e., I don't want to point it at my own
> sendmail, correct?

Correct. Give it the name of the machine running the SMTP server.
The same thing as in the "smtp-server" field of your Pine config
(which I think you said was working).

> smtp-server's value is 
> "mail.speakeasy.net"
>
> Documentation:
> The name of the host running SMTP server.
> It can also be a function
> called from `smtp-via-smtp' with arguments SENDER and RECIPIENTS.
>
> You can customize this variable.
>
> Defined in `smtp'.

There is no "smtp" library in the Emacs-20.7 distribution.
There is only smtpmail.el.

New guess: you have got a not-part-of-Emacs package called smtp.el
installed somewhere in your load path, and it is screwing things up.

Can you do:

M-x locate-library smtp 

and move the resulting file (both .el and .elc) somewhere harmless,
out of the Emacs load-path? Googling around, it seems that "smtp.el"
might be associated with a hacked smtpmail.el. You want to get rid of
that too, and make sure you are using the standard Emacs smtpmail.el
(located in share/emacs/20.7/lisp/mail). Once those non-Emacs files
are out of the way, restart Emacs and try again.

> So emacs shouldn't be using the local sendmail at all, should it?
> But from the error messages we saw, it is.

Yes - seems very broken.