Sending email with GNU Emacs - "Process SMTP not running" error
 

Hello,
I have read the relevant sections of the emacs manual hoping to get my emacs program set up to send email.

My ISP uses an SMTP server on port 465 and I have verified that the server is up and running by an nmap port scan. I have even inserted the IP number rather than the hostname address.

My machine is running FreeBSD 9 and is fully up to date.

This is the contents of my .emacs file:

----------

(setq send-mail-function 'smtpmail-send-it
smtp-starttls-credentials '(("62.254.26.195" 465 nil nil))
smtpmail-auth-credentials (expand-file-name "~/.authinfo"))
(setq smtpmail-smtp-server "62.254.26.195")
(setq smtpmail-smtp-service 465)

-----------

When i C-C C-C to send the message, I get an error in the mini buffer that says:

"Process SMTP not running"

I have tried to find the answer via google but no clear answer seems to be available. Is anyone able to help with this?

Can you do a basic telnet to the IP on that port from the server and send email manually?

Perhaps - but I want to get emacs to do it.
Thanks

Perhaps? yes or no. Your first troubleshooting step is to eliminate your variables and isolate the problem. Verify the basic connectivity from your server to the SMTP server before you start to troubleshoot emacs.

http://www.debianhelp.co.uk/mail.htm

The problem is not the server. I can send email using other mail user clients on the smtp server. I do not know how to send email manually by telnet and don't think this will bring me any further forward. The error message states 'Process SMTP not running' - do you know what this means?

Unless you're willing to take the steps I suggest I can't help you. I gave you a link to send the email over telnet and that should be sufficient.


The error, although I haven't seen it before, seems to indicate that emacs is not able to contact the SMTP server which is why we are looking at that. So heres your basic telnet email session incase you missed the link I posted to you:

IF the above works please implement the following into your emacs user config file:

smtpmail-debug-info
smtpmail-debug-verb


And provide the output when attempting to send.

Where does the output go? I may not be able to provide the output as the machine i am using only has command line tools. If this website is lynx friendly then i might be able to transmit full output

When I telnet , it connects as i get Escape character is ^]

I then type in helo my user name

and get 'connection closed by foreign host'

-------
Icedove works and I have looked again at the settings for smtp:

server name: smtp.virginmedia.com
port : 465
secure authentication: NO
connection security: SSL/TLS

-------

So far I have tried a few 'how tos' i have found on the net - which all seem to involve gmail. I need to connect to my isp as that is my main email account.

I have even tried updating my emacs to emacs 24 but that caused so many problems with outdated dependencies that i had to do a complete re-install of my FreeBSD yesterday to make sure I have a stable system.

There is no way that this can be a real bug as emacs has been around for a long long time.

I am going to start again now from scratch with editing the .emacs file.

The connection closed error indicates either a syntax error on the telnet connection or a security rule on the SMTP server side. You would implement the directives I gave you in your .emacs config file along with the other directives. It should give you the output on stderr which is your terminal.

Thank you for your help - After another 7 hours I have decided that this is ridiculous. I am going to use alpine instead.