Re: Gnus with Exim

[David Abrahams <dave@boost-consulting.com>]

"Steven E. Harris" <seh@panix.com> writes:

> David Abrahams <dave@boost-consulting.com> writes:
>
> [...]
>
>> I'm wondering what the most effective way of dealing with this is.
>> It seems kinda silly that a notice can fail to be delivered *to me*
>> by an exim running on this machine, and the messages will get thrown
>> out eventually!
>
> When you say "to me", do you mean to you as your local account on that
> computer, or to you as a remote account such as
> boost-consulting.com?

I just mean "to me."  Of course it's technically logical when you
account for the fact that going to me involves a remote IMAP server.
But then the messages disappear eventually, which seems kinda dumb.

> Seeing the log messages below, I think you mean the latter, though it
> is worth noting that exim may have also sent some delay or failure
> warnings to your /local/ account. 

I don't even know what a local account might be on my laptop.

> That would depend on whether exim
> thinks the message originated from a local account.
>
>> Oh, look:
>
> [...]
>
>> Is not helping because it reaches smtp.rcn.com, but then that server
>> asks for authentication!  AFAIK there's no authentication I can
>> actually give it that will work from outside my cable modem, and it
>> forbids authentication from behind my cable modem :(
>
> Have you tried specifying authentication credentials for rcn.com in
> your exim.conf, but not citing their use as mandatory? 

Nope; it's worth a shot.  Maybe it's time to go down the street to
that cafe.

> You may recall
> that earlier on our discussion we looked at the hosts_try_auth¹ 

Say, how do you get footnote to superscript?  Do you need to do
anything special to make sure that the receiver doesn't have problems
with the coding system you send?

> and hosts_require_tls² options for the remote_smtp
> transport. Perhaps you can include rcn.com in a hosts_try_auth
> option but not include the TLS stipulation:
>
> ,----[ Augmented transport ]
> | remote_smtp:
> |   driver = smtp
> |   hosts_try_auth = smtp.rcn.com
> `----
>
> Later in the authenticators section, you'd need to specify one or two
> credentials using LOGIN or PLAIN authentication:
>
> ,----[ Authenticators ]
> | begin authenticators
> | 
> | fixed_login:
> |   driver = plaintext
> |   public_name = LOGIN
> |   client_send = : dave : password
> | 
> | 
> | fixed_plain:
> |   driver = plaintext
> |   public_name = PLAIN
> |   client_send = ^dave^password
> `----
>
> Here we just cite the user name and password as global. It's probably
> possible to make them host-specific, but I don't have an example on
> hand.

No need; I'm using the same password on all smtp servers.

>> This is a little discouraging!  Got any sage words for me?
>
> What a nice surprise to come home to. 

Sarcasm, or...?

> Can you try the suggestions
> above from outside your cable modem connection and report back?

I sure will.  Probably a little later this afternoon.

Thanks for all your help!

-- 
Dave Abrahams
Boost Consulting
www.boost-consulting.com