[REBOL] Re: SMTP Authentication
From: Gary:Jones:usap:gov at: 6-May-2004 10:14
Hi, Stuart,
From: Stuart
....
> I hope I followed your directions properly.
> Can you help me figure out what is wrong?
....
for rest of email, see:
http://www.rebol.net/list/list-msgs/35906.html
This is an interesting situation. It appears as though you
did everything correctly, assuming that "<obscured>" was
substituted for "myusername", etc (meaning the angle
brackets were merely placed to help me see the substitution).
The traced output is very helpful, and yet I won't fully be
able to do more research until our satellite that allows
web access comes back up (hours from now).
In the meantime, here is what I see (this email will go out
on our "slow" satellite):
The line:
Net-log: "250-AUTH PLAIN LOGIN"
suggests that a plain (clear) text login is appropriate for
this email server. This is what you have done by manually
setting the username and password.
However, later, the line:
** User Error: Server error: tcp 501 Invalid base64 data
** Near: smtp-port: open [scheme: 'smtp]
would normally suggest that the server was expecting a base
64 encoded string. You tried that last week, but you could
try it again "to be sure". Do exactly what you did but use
a direct encoding like as follows:
system/schemes/smtp/user: enbase/base "myusername" 64
system/schemes/smtp/pass: enbase/base "mypassword" 64
My guess is that this too will fail, like it apparently did
last week. Do it with the trace/net on to see if the message
is any different. My guess is that it will not be
significantly different.
I suspect that the major clue provided is with this line:
Net-log: "250-STARTTLS"
This is the most interesting point that I would like to
research. I vaguely recall that TLS is an encoding or
encrypting scheme. Does anyone else know? If it is then
the email server may be looking for a "plain text" version
of the encoded or encrypted username and password. I do
not recall how this can be done easily through REBOL. Does
anyone else know?
If no one else (that reads this email) has knowledge on
TLS, I would start by googling (meaning, use google.com to
search) the exact string "250-STARTTLS"
Depending on what that yielded, I might next find out if
TLS is an encoding or encrypting scheme.
Depending on what that yielded, I would next find out more
about the email server by googling "ESMTP Exim 4.24".
Sometimes if an email server is not following a standard, there
will be 5 billion references on the net where people have
the same problem, and you can interpolate a REBOL solution
from the help these people receive.
Finally, as a cross check, I would google the line
tcp 501 Invalid base64 data
to be sure that this may not have
an additional meaning besides what may be obvious.
If it ends up being that TLS is an encoding or encrypting
scheme, and if this method is not directly or easily supported
in REBOL, then depending on the method used, you may be able
to do the encoding or encrypting *once* through some other utility
and then plug the results in directly into your scripts.
This is the best I can do without being able to access the web.
If I have time this evening, I will try to look. In the
meantime, I am hoping that either you or someone knows what
these clues mean, and can fill in the gap.
Hang in there. You may get your REBOL solution yet.
--Scott Jones
