HouseBot

I inadvertently posted this in another forum for Housebot feature requests but I guess in a roundabout way, it does look like a need for a new feature..



Anyway... I am having trouble using the SMTP plugin in Housebot to send e-mail. The trouble is that my ISP (Comcast) requires authentication before using the SMTP server.



Using Ethereal, I peeked at the network transactions between the Comcast SMTP mail server and the e-mail client during the send email phase. It looks like the mail protocol that Comcast uses is actually ESMTP! I did some reading and this is an extension to SMTP to add an authentication layer before handling the usual SMTP commands.... Just great...



I don't think the Housebot SMTP plugin handles ESMTP authentication... does it?



If not, can someone suggest a command line utility that I can use to handle ESMTP on ISP servers?



Before anyone says it, don't suggest using an open SMTP internet relay. There are three big problems with open SMTP relays - 1) they're not reliable, 2) they can harvest recipient email address and use them for spam, and 3) Comcast blocks port 25 to everybody else except for their own SMTP servers.

loo_hoo_ser wrote:I don't think the Housebot SMTP plugin handles ESMTP authentication... does it?

Nope.



However, I use the email sender device to send from my comcast service and it works fine. They do require that you specify the message sender property, but other than that I'm able to send to the smtp.comcast.net mail server without any problem.

Hi Scott -



I did fill in the sender field in the Housebot SMTP plugin, but that did not work. I think Comcast's email service is very regional. When I moved 5 miles from my old house to the new house, I actually changed counties and ended up at another part of Comcast internet. As a result, I lost my e-mail account and had to apply for it agin when I signed up again for Comcast high-speed internet at my new house.



The Comcast server that I looked at did announce it was using the ESMTP protocol and required authentication before proceeding to send mail.



I found a command line ESMTP utilty that I can use to make this work. I have Housebot invoke it as an external program in a batch file.



Here is the link to the ESMTP command line client.



http://www.codestone.ltd.uk/software/docs/cssmtp/



This one, you have to pay for after 30 days - only $20 for 1 user. I will try it for a while and see how it works. It works with my Comcast SMTP server with the authentication.



I know there are other versions out there, I'm not sure which one is a command line friendly FREE version. I did come across one that was written in a Perl script!

Just a thought off the top of my head. Not tested. Not even sure it is possible..



What about setting up an internal SMTP server that could handle the eSMTP connection??? HB would send email to it. It would send it to the ComCast server.

More moving parts to break!!



What would you use as an STMP server that was ESMTP compatible? It would require another service, either on the same PC that the Housebot resides on or another PC that was network accesible to the HB server. Preferably for Windows....



I wouldn't be surprised if some of us here already have an SMTP service up and running... :lol:



Besides, I know for sure my ESMTP solution that I described above works fine and is no more complex than the HB SMTP plug-in. However, it'd be nice if there were a freeware solution....

Bump -

Now that Scottbot has the reigns again - can ESMTP be a feature of the existing SMTP plugin for authentication for SMTP? My ISP requires authentication before an e-mail can be sent. See previous comments in this thread for a refresher on the details plus my workaround.

I'll look into this. The current email sender device is very simple. If the enhancements to support ESMTP aren't too extensive, it should be possible.

Great! I shouldn't think it would be too bad - I know there's source code floating out there - it's a question of how well it can be integrated into the plugin!