Comment 2 for bug 1215882

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64; rv:17.0) Gecko/20130806 Firefox/17.0 Iceweasel/17.0.8 (Nightly/Aurora)
Build ID: 20130806234539

Steps to reproduce:

It seems that emails are silently discarded when the remote SMTP server replies with an error on STARTTLS. Here is an example smtp log created with NSPR_LOG_MODULES='smtp:5,timestamp':

2013-08-23 11:10:25.548708 UTC - 43480896[7fe10164b370]: SMTP Connecting to: mail.trialphaenergy.com
2013-08-23 11:10:26.513993 UTC - 43480896[7fe10164b370]: SMTP entering state: 0
2013-08-23 11:10:26.514026 UTC - 43480896[7fe10164b370]: SMTP Response: 220 mail.trialphaenergy.com Microsoft ESMTP MAIL Service ready at Fri, 23 Aug 2013 04:10:25 -0700
2013-08-23 11:10:26.514047 UTC - 43480896[7fe10164b370]: SMTP entering state: 14
2013-08-23 11:10:26.514069 UTC - 43480896[7fe10164b370]: SMTP Send: EHLO [10.11.206.9]
2013-08-23 11:10:27.144751 UTC - 43480896[7fe10164b370]: SMTP entering state: 0
2013-08-23 11:10:27.144791 UTC - 43480896[7fe10164b370]: SMTP Response: 250-mail.trialphaenergy.com Hello [10.11.10.19]
2013-08-23 11:10:27.144808 UTC - 43480896[7fe10164b370]: SMTP entering state: 0
2013-08-23 11:10:27.144817 UTC - 43480896[7fe10164b370]: SMTP Response: 250-SIZE
2013-08-23 11:10:27.144828 UTC - 43480896[7fe10164b370]: SMTP entering state: 0
2013-08-23 11:10:27.144839 UTC - 43480896[7fe10164b370]: SMTP Response: 250-PIPELINING
2013-08-23 11:10:27.144846 UTC - 43480896[7fe10164b370]: SMTP entering state: 0
2013-08-23 11:10:27.144851 UTC - 43480896[7fe10164b370]: SMTP Response: 250-DSN
2013-08-23 11:10:27.144857 UTC - 43480896[7fe10164b370]: SMTP entering state: 0
2013-08-23 11:10:27.144862 UTC - 43480896[7fe10164b370]: SMTP Response: 250-ENHANCEDSTATUSCODES
2013-08-23 11:10:27.144868 UTC - 43480896[7fe10164b370]: SMTP entering state: 0
2013-08-23 11:10:27.144885 UTC - 43480896[7fe10164b370]: SMTP Response: 250-STARTTLS
2013-08-23 11:10:27.144889 UTC - 43480896[7fe10164b370]: SMTP entering state: 0
2013-08-23 11:10:27.144893 UTC - 43480896[7fe10164b370]: SMTP Response: 250-AUTH NTLM
2013-08-23 11:10:27.144897 UTC - 43480896[7fe10164b370]: SMTP entering state: 0
2013-08-23 11:10:27.144900 UTC - 43480896[7fe10164b370]: SMTP Response: 250-8BITMIME
2013-08-23 11:10:27.144904 UTC - 43480896[7fe10164b370]: SMTP entering state: 0
2013-08-23 11:10:27.144920 UTC - 43480896[7fe10164b370]: SMTP Response: 250-BINARYMIME
2013-08-23 11:10:27.144926 UTC - 43480896[7fe10164b370]: SMTP entering state: 0
2013-08-23 11:10:27.144931 UTC - 43480896[7fe10164b370]: SMTP Response: 250 CHUNKING
2013-08-23 11:10:27.144936 UTC - 43480896[7fe10164b370]: SMTP entering state: 4
2013-08-23 11:10:27.144961 UTC - 43480896[7fe10164b370]: SMTP entering state: 21
2013-08-23 11:10:27.144968 UTC - 43480896[7fe10164b370]: SMTP Send: STARTTLS
2013-08-23 11:10:27.757848 UTC - 43480896[7fe10164b370]: SMTP entering state: 0
2013-08-23 11:10:27.757881 UTC - 43480896[7fe10164b370]: SMTP Response: 554 Policy violation. Email Session ID: {521742ED-1-F0B0B0A-FFFF}
2013-08-23 11:10:27.757893 UTC - 43480896[7fe10164b370]: SMTP entering state: 19
2013-08-23 11:10:27.757900 UTC - 43480896[7fe10164b370]: SMTP entering state: 21
2013-08-23 11:10:27.757905 UTC - 43480896[7fe10164b370]: SMTP Send: QUIT
2013-08-23 11:10:27.757915 UTC - 43480896[7fe10164b370]: SMTP entering state: 0

The UI, however, gives no indication of failure and closes the compose window after the apparent successful submission to the smtp server.

If the user has not configured a Sent folder this results in data loss. Even if the user has configured a sent folder, he receives no indication that the email has not been sent.