Re: [Evolution] SMTP Error

[Jeffrey Stedfast <fejj ximian com>]

Well, if I was to hazard a guess based on a similar complaint in the past... I'd say that your server doesn't like it when Evolution re-EHLO's the SMTP server after a successful SASL authentication sequence. In other words... your server is a hunk of crap and is not rfc compliant (see http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc2554.txt Section 4 under "Discussion", paragraph 6 - pasted below for your convenience).

         If a security layer is negotiated through the SASL
         authentication exchange, it takes effect immediately following
         the CRLF that concludes the authentication exchange for the
         client, and the CRLF of the success reply for the server.  Upon
         a security layer's taking effect, the SMTP protocol is reset to
         the initial state (the state in SMTP after a server issues a
         220 service ready greeting).  The server MUST discard any
         knowledge obtained from the client, such as the argument to the
         EHLO command, which was not obtained from the SASL negotiation
         itself.  The client MUST discard any knowledge obtained from
         the server, such as the list of SMTP service extensions, which
         was not obtained from the SASL negotiation itself (with the
         exception that a client MAY compare the list of advertised SASL
         mechanisms before and after authentication in order to detect
         an active down-negotiation attack).  The client SHOULD send an
         EHLO command as the first command after a successful SASL
         negotiation which results in the enabling of a security layer.

Before anyone jumps on me and points out that the rfc says "SHOULD send an EHLO...", let me rebut that by saying that the reason the rfc says SHOULD instead of MUST is because it is not necessary for a client to send EHLO if it does not use any extensions. However, Evolution does use extensions, and so therefor MUST re-issue an EHLO command.

Please also note that SHOULD in the context of an rfc mean, and I quote:
3. SHOULD   This word, or the adjective "RECOMMENDED", mean that there
   may exist valid reasons in particular circumstances to ignore a
   particular item, but the full implications must be understood and
   carefully weighed before choosing a different course.
In other words, SHOULD means MUST unless you have a damn good reason not to.

Either way, if you go back and read the first half of paragraph 6 quoted above, you cannot come to any other conclusion than "the server is not rfc compliant and is therefor broken" since it obviously does NOT follow the MUST clause.


However, to say for certain whether my guess as to what the problem is is correct, I'd need a debug log - open a terminal and do the following:

export CAMEL_VERBOSE_DEBUG=1; killev; evolution-mail

a message will be printed to the screen saying that "Evolution Mail is now Ready!" or some such. Once you see that, go ahead and start up Evolution (in another terminal or via a menu, please).

now try and send a message - debug messages will be printed to the terminal that evolution-mail is running in. Copy all of the "sending:" and "received:" lines and post them in a reply to me.

Jeff

On Sat, 2003-01-04 at 05:09, Bill Hartwell wrote:
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> Unfortunately, it appears that the SSL connection is not the solution to the 
> problem, either. I reset my connection to never use SSL, killed and restarted 
> Evolution, and got the exact same error:
>
> Data response error: Need Rcpt command
>
> This, after re-entering my smtp password (yes, my email server requires 
> authentication for both receiving and sending) when the window popped up 
> after I switched SSL from "whenever possible" to "never".
>
>
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-- 
Jeffrey Stedfast
Evolution Hacker - Ximian, Inc.
fejj ximian com  - www.ximian.com