I can receive mail using kmail, but I cannot send. I'm at wits end trying to find out what the problem is. I keep getting the following message:-

The mail logs always have the following kind of messages:-
Nov 9 16:38:03 linux postfix/smtp[4264]: connect to smtphost.suffolk.lib.ny.us[209.139.23.58]: Connection timed out (port 25)
Nov 9 16:38:03 linux postfix/smtp[4264]: 79E0B16EC9: to=<[my_user_name]@suffolk.lib.ny.us>, relay=none, delay=98379, status=deferred (connect to smtphost.suffolk.lib.ny.us[209.139.23.58]: Connection timed out)
Nov 9 16:38:04 linux postfix/smtp[4259]: connect to smtphost.suffolk.lib.ny.us[209.139.23.58]: Connection timed out (port 25)
Nov 9 16:38:04 linux postfix/smtp[4259]: 15CDD32B2E: to=<[my_user_name]@suffolk.lib.ny.us>, relay=none, delay=97894, status=deferred (connect to smtphost.suffolk.lib.ny.us[209.139.23.58]: Connection timed out)

From my lookup of the term postfix - it is a mail server. So presumably kmail is transferring the request to send out the mail to postfix, rather than sending them out itself. I don't see postfix running on my system and have no idea how to start or configure it.

I know for a fact that the smtphost.suffolk.lib.ny.us is fine because I use it with outlook express all the time. I even connect to it using my personal (handwritten) mail client.

Would be grateful to anyone who can help.

Bizarre!

Have you tried configuring an alternative mail client - eg, mozilla, evolution, etc..?

I tried you suggestion with ximian evolution. Same thing, I get:
I haven't looked at var/log/mail yet. I've to log on as root to read that. I'll post another
msg in a few minutes with that info.

Also I found the postfix configuration file. Based on my limited understanding, I cant see
any obvious issues except perhaps for this:-

Since I'm on a standalone system, I guess that it should be POSTFIX_NULLCLIENT="yes".
I dont know if changing it would make any difference.

Here are the messages fro var/log/mail :

Also I just realized (from the time stamps) that this one track automaton - postfix - keeps trying to send these messages every few minutes. So the mail file keeps getting bigger and bigger. I'm not sure if these messages are the kmail ones, the evolution ones or both.

Notice the "from" address in the first few [qmgr] lines. That doesn't seem right. But maybe they are from a much older session when I hadn't set the name of the mail server - I dont know how to tell.

I just rebooted to NT and sent an e-mail to myself using this smtp server. So the server is definitely ok.

Thanks for any help.

i had the same problem.

in your server settings, turn off all of the TLS, etc etc options for your smtp server.

i don't think the autodetect feature is 100% accurate.

that solved my problem.

I never turned it on to start with - I don't think the server supports it. The authentication method is also plaintext because that is what the server supports.

I suspect that I need to configure postfix. But I'm not sure what parameters I need to set. I am on a single machine connected via cable and a hardware router to my ISP. Anyone know how to configure postfix in this case? I suspect that the issue is the "from" address which postfix thinks is "linux.site". See the var/log messages a couple of posts above. How can I get it to put a valid "from" address?

Also there seems to be no way to empty the deferred messages queue in postfix. Messages that fail to be sent the first time are put in this queue and periodically retried. Since I know these are never going to be sent I would like to purge the queue as all it is doing is taking up resources and filling up the mail log.

How irritating! Can't even send a simple e-mail!

out of curiosity, why are you using postfix?

Kmail is using postfix.

OK, the problem is finally solved.

The story is as follows:-

First I got rid of the "from" address <lxuser@linux.site> that postfix was using that isn't a fully qualified domain name. I did this by adding an entry:

lxuser@linux.site [me]@[my_email_provider].com

to the "sender_canonical" file in /etc/postfix.

There also needs to be an entry in main.cf in /etc/postfix like:
sender_canonical_maps = hash:/etc/postfix/sender_canonical
which tells postfix that the map is in sender_canonical. This entry was already there.

Once I did this and refreshed postfix, at least the mail logs started showing my email address as the "from" address. However I still could not connect. I was getting the same error!!

[Now here comes the embarassing bit]:-

Then I thought - let me boot into NT, send an e-mail using Outlook express and see what the detailed headers look like. I did this and to my surprise I didn't see "smtphost.suffolk.lib.ny.us" anywhere in the headers. In other words OE wasn't using the mail server that I had thought it was using at all! In fact it was using hotmail servers and the hotmail servers had been set as default. So could the problem be with the .lib server?

So I set the default server back to the .lib server and voila - I could not connect with OE. Then a memory came flooding back - Sometime last year I had changed the default e-mail account in OE to hotmail because .lib server had mysteriously stopped working. I had forgotten about it and all the time I thought that I was using the .lib server for SMTP. The reason it had stopped working was that my ISP (optimum online) had silently filtered out port 25 requests because of spam issues. But hotmail's account continued working because it is http based. So in fact I cannot use any e-mail server on port 25.

However I can use optimum online's mail server on port 25. So I changed the smtp settings to mail.optonline.com and to my relief everything worked - and not a moment too soon.

Such was the manner in which an imminent nervous breakdown was prevented.
Thanks for your moral support :-)