Re: Any way to captuer smtp output when sending mail?

[Harry Putnam <reader@newsguy.com>]

david.goldberg6@verizon.net (Dave Goldberg) writes:

>> How would I go about sending mail in such a way as to capture the smtp
>> output like one can do with `mailx -v'
>
>> I'd like to collect that smtp output in a buffer as I send mail.
>
> What is your outgoing email setup?  As another poster noted, if you
> use smtpmail (as I do) you can set smtpmail-debug-info and
> smtpmail-debug-verb to t to get a trace buffer each time you send a
> message (it gets overwritten for each one, though, so be prepared to
> save it off if you need the record).

Thanks for the input, it is informed and very helpful:

You hit it on the head... I don't use smtpmail ... only once a few yrs
ago when I set up gnus on windows. 

I've done my mail activity on linux using gnus for many yrs, with sendmail
as the sending software.

> However, there are other ways to configure emacs to send mail and the
> fact that you are not finding that variable suggests you may be using
> one of them.  Most likely is sendmail since I think that's the
> default, in which case you may find you have a buffer named " sendmail
> errors" that has the trace in it.  You might also want to take a look
> at the mail-interactive variable.  If it's nil I don't think you get
> the trace.

Do you know if that trace buffer would appear only if there were errors?

I use this in gnus 
 (setq mail-user-agent  'gnus-user-agent)

for many years.  

That would have meant sendmail for many yrs but last few I've started
using exim4 on debian.

Since exim4's executable is named `sendmail'.... After seeing your
post, I thought it might still work.... but apparently not since the
variable you mentioned: `mail-interactive' is set to `t'. But still I
don't have that buffer.
    
Do you think there might be still more factors that need resetting or
the like to be able to follow that smtp output regularly?

Of course, I can and do follow the smtp output using a homeboy mail
sending script that uses `mailx -v' for testing situations.  It records
the smtp output, but it would be nice to have that output available
all the time.   And I didn't really see a handy way to capture it when
sending from gnus which is my normal way.

And, of course again, there are exim logs, mail.log and so forth.
Still it would be handy to have a continuing buffer in gnus to refer
to when a problem arises.

Perhaps there is some way to hook into that smtp activity in verbose
mode by scripting something? .... but that is a bit over my pea brain
comprehension.