Re: using a remote IMAP server and smarthost

From: Florian Kulzer <florian.kulzer+debian(at)icfo.es>
Date: Sun Aug 26 2007 - 17:53:19 EDT

On Sun, Aug 26, 2007 at 20:34:54 +0100, Richard Lyons wrote:
> On Sun, August 26, 2007 17:42, Florian Kulzer wrote:
> [...]
> > or you can install the "msmtp"
> > package which provides a sendmail work-alike that is very easy to
> > configure. Here is an example configuration file (~/.msmtprc):
> >
> > #-------------------------
> > tls on
> > host localhost
> > port 2525
> > from user@server.tld
> > auth on
> > user YOUR_USERNAME
> > password YOUR_PASSWORD
> > #-------------------------
> >
> > Then you can tell mutt to use msmtp by putting
> >
> > set sendmail="/usr/bin/msmtp"
> >
> > into your ~/.muttrc and you should be ready to go.
>
> I now get an error message from mutt:
>
> Errore nella spedizione del messaggio, il figlio è uscito con 69 (Service
> unavailable.)
> which is probably in English
> Error in sending the message, the child process exited with 69 (Service
> unavailable.)
>
> and it also relays:
>
> msmtp: the server does not support TLS via the STARTTLS command
> msmtp: could not send mail (account default from /home/richard/.msmtprc)
>
> I'm guessing the 'server' referred to is the VM. I'll try installing
> msmtp there.

The server in question should be your provider's smarthost; the ssh link from your local computer to your VM should be completely transparent for both mutt and the smarthost. This is probably a simple configuration issue (wrong port on the smarthost, wrong tls settings). It will be easier to figure this out if you install msmtp directly on the VM and try to make it work with mutt running on the VM first. (This eliminates the ssh port-forwarding details as a source of problems.)

Maybe the smarthost does not use TLS (an encryption wrapper) because it is only dealing with internal connections from trusted VMs. I would start simple on the VM, with this ~/.msmtprc:

#-------------------------

tls off
host FULLY_QUALIFIED_DOMAIN_NAME_OR_IP_OF_SMARTHOST from YOUR_EMAIL_ADDRESS
auth plain
user YOUR_USERNAME
password YOUR_PASSWORD

#-------------------------

If that does not work then try to use "tls on". If that gives you the same error message then try to add "tls_starttls off" (while keeping "tls on"). You might furthermore have to play around with the "auth" setting; see the manpage of msmtp. What information did your provider give you about the smtp smarthost?

One of these configurations should work unless the smarthost uses a non-standard setup or strange ports. (Normally msmtp can figure out the correct port from the configuration details.) Once you have a working .msmtprc on the VM it should be easy to set it up on the local computer as well. (We may have to adjust the destination port of the ssh port-forwarding command; it could be 465 instead of 25.)

-- 
Regards,            | 
http://users.icfo.es/Florian.Kulzer
          Florian   |

Received on Sun Aug 26 18:10:35 2007