Forum OpenACS Q&A: Re: Sending Emails via SMTP port 587

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16: Re: Sending Emails via SMTP port 587 (response to 1)
Posted by Gustaf Neumann on 03/27/25 10:20 AM

Do you remember my mail above, explaining the setup:

    A OpenACS (Sender) → B (nssmptd, 127.0.0.1:smtpdport) → C (relay, localhost:25)

With the configuration, you provide, you are trying

    A OpenACS (Sender) → B (nssmptd, 108.169.164.147:587) → C (relay, smtp.celtic-arts.org:587)

You tell here nssmptd to listen on "108.169.164.147:587", which will not work, since (a) this is apparently not your IP address, and (b) 587 is a privileged port, which would requires including this address to the pre-bind list of the nsd parameters (you don't need it).

Furthermore, you forgot to percent-escape the first at-sign in the "relay" URL (see my last posting).

The right setup in your case should be

    A OpenACS (Sender) → B (nssmptd, 127.0.0.1:2525) → C (relay, smtp.celtic-arts.org:587)

The following configuration snippet will do the right setup as i inderstand it, where it assumes that webmaster@celtic-arts.org is the username and xyz+PWD is the password.

set smtpdport 2525
ns_section "ns/server/default/module/nssmtpd" {
    ns_param port $smtpdport
    ns_param address 127.0.0.1
    
    ns_param relay plain://webmaster%40celtic-arts.org:xyz+PWD@smtp.celtic-arts.org:587 
    
    ns_param initproc smtpd::init
    ns_param rcptproc smtpd::rcpt
    ns_param dataproc smtpd::data
    ns_param errorproc smtpd::error
    ns_param relaydomains "localhost
    ns_param localdomains "localhost"
}
ns_section ns/server/default/modules {
    if {$smtpdport ne ""} {ns_param nssmtpd nssmtpd}
}

I took the liberty to connect to your mail server for testing, which - of course - led to an error when trying to send an email. During startup, you should see lines like the following

[27/Mar/2025:09:58:02][30489.1f0158840][-main:default-] Notice: modload: loading module nssmtpd from file nssmtpd
[27/Mar/2025:09:58:02][30489.1f0158840][-main:default-] Notice: ns_smtpd: adding local relay domain: MacBook-Pro-M1.local
[27/Mar/2025:09:58:02][30489.1f0158840][-main:default-] Notice: smtpd relayhost: new-style parameter 'smtp.celtic-arts.org:587'
[27/Mar/2025:09:58:02][30489.1f0158840][-main:default-] Notice: smtpd relayhost: got user and password
[27/Mar/2025:09:58:02][30489.1f0158840][-main:default-] Notice: smtpd relayhost: host <smtp.celtic-arts.org> port 587
[27/Mar/2025:09:58:02][30489.1f0158840][-main:default-] Notice: nssmtpd:0: enable 0 spooler thread(s) 
[27/Mar/2025:09:58:02][30489.1f0158840][-main:default-] Notice: nssmtpd:0: enable 0 writer thread(s) 
[27/Mar/2025:09:58:02][30489.1f0158840][-main:default-] Notice: nssmtpd: version 2.4 loaded

and when running the ns_smtpd send ... command from above (March 23), the result i get is:

nssmtpd: send: unexpected status from localhost: 421 Service not available. 4.7.8 Error: authentication failed: (reason unavailable)

which is the expected result. I noticed, that the mail server is configured to disallow password guessing attempts in a way to reject any attempts after a bad password was provided for a while, so the error will be different on a second attempt.

I realize that the many configuration options of the nssmptd module can be confusing for beginners, while they offer many options to power users. I will modify the module to provide more defaults such it will work with a minimal configuration.