thunderbird fails to email via smtp with message "An error has occurred sending mail: SMTP server error. The server responded: Unknown command contact your administrator for assistance"

[Sternford]

Binary package hint: thunderbird

I am using Ubuntu 8.04

I was using evolution which is currently set as my default mail client.

Mozilla thunderbird can receive email from my ISP's pop3 server. It is however failing to send to the ISP's SMTP server.

ProblemType: Bug
Architecture: i386
Date: Wed Sep 24 13:33:02 2008
Dependencies:

DistroRelease: Ubuntu 8.04
Package: mozilla-thunderbird None [modified: /var/lib/dpkg/info/mozilla-thunderbird.list]
PackageArchitecture: all
ProcEnviron:
 PATH=/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin:/sbin:/bin:/usr/games
 LANG=en_ZW.UTF-8
 SHELL=/bin/bash
SourcePackage: thunderbird
Uname: Linux 2.6.24-19-generic i686

[fab-furnari (fab-furnari)]

Thank you for taking the time to report this bug and helping to make Ubuntu better. Please answer these questions:

* Is this reproducible?
* If so, what specific steps should we take to recreate this bug?

This will help us to find and resolve the problem.

[Fridolin Heyer (fh)]

Thunderbird has a strange problem when working with slow mailservers.

The preference variable

mail.server.server2.timeout hat a default value of 29.

Setting this to 600 solves the problem.

But this setting is not persistent, thunderbird resetst the preference back to 29
after sending a mail.

The bug is that thunderbird overwrites a user setting!

wbr
fridolin

[Goutam Roy (goutam-r)]

I am also facing the problem. I can receive emails but unable to send. It asked passwords one after another though I push smtp server number and password correctly. Please help.

[Alexander Sack (asac)]

this is a mail server issue. ask your admin to fix that.

to eliminate any doubt about that verify that the problem still exists with a fresh profile.

[Fridolin Heyer (fh)]

Hi Alexander,

is a mail server really able to
change the thunderbird setting

mail.server.server2.timeout from 300 down to 29?

I can set it manually in thunderbird to 300
a see how it falls back to 29 while sending a mail.

Is _this_ really done by the mailserver?
We use courier as mail server for imap.

If the mail server is really able to do that,
sorry for the bug ticket.

best regards
fridolin

Alexander Sack wrote:
> this is a mail server issue. ask your admin to fix that.
>
> to eliminate any doubt about that verify that the problem still exists
> with a fresh profile.
>
> ** Changed in: thunderbird (Ubuntu)
> Status: Incomplete => Invalid
>
>

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[grikdog (dcoshel)]

Please do not blatantly assume this an unreproducible bug. My ISP and I have just spent over an hour on this exact same issue. I cannot both POP3 and SMTP using my account name and password, although two other users on this system CAN. The only difference I can see is that I am the admin, and they are not.

POP3 is OK. SMTP hangs and times out, every time. This is NEW behavior.

Password Manager does not record my username (my ISP required a change from username to <email address hidden>). It shows <none supplied> which should be an error. Maybe that's the problem?