Doug - I heard your plea. I, too, have several outstanding questions for which I haven't gotten answers (on this, or several other lists!). I dug back looking for the mail-related question to which you referred. One bit of feedback - the question was very general. Questions of the type "It doesn't work, what should I do?" are hard to approach. This third message (after I sorted my inbox, and read all three messages together) finally gave me something I could comment on... On Tue, 5 Jun 2001, Doug McGarrett wrote:
Sorry, I didn't attach the message I got back:
"Cannot open smtp connection to host i-2000.com"
Please add this to previous message. Thanx. --doug
First the disclaimer: I'm a fetchmail/pine user, so there's no kmail specifics here... OK, here's some things to consider. 1) Is that really the hostname you need to use? Most ISPs specify a separate host for POP3 traffic, like pop.i-2000.com or mail.i-2000.com. I did a few 'dig's, and discovered that mail.i-2000.com and smtp.i-2000.com exist, but no pop.i-2000.com. The MX record for i-2000.com points to smtp.i-2000.com (which is an alias of mail.) and i3.i-2000.com 2) Most users fetch mail with the POP3 protocol, some use IMAP. SMTP is used for sending mail, not receiving it. Mebbe kmail is just imprecise with its message, mebbe you're asking it to do something unnatural. Try simulating what kmail is supposed to do, by using telnet to the specific port. I did this: rtg@lindy:~ > telnet mail.i-2000.com 110 Trying 204.97.92.9... Connected to mail.i-2000.com. Escape character is '^]'. +OK Qpopper (version 4.0.3) at mail3.i-2000.com starting. <9498.992492879@mail3.i-2000.com> ^] telnet> quit Connection closed. rtg@lindy:~ > telnet mail.i-2000.com 143 Trying 204.97.92.9... telnet: connect to address 204.97.92.9: Connection refused rtg@lindy:~ > telnet i-2000.com 110 Trying 207.97.131.10... telnet: connect to address 207.97.131.10: Connection refused rtg@lindy:~ > telnet i-2000.com 25 Trying 207.97.131.10... Connected to i-2000.com. Escape character is '^]'. 220 web2.i-2000.com ESMTP Sendmail 8.8.5/8.7; Thu, 14 Jun 2001 00:29:46 -0400 (EDT) ^] telnet> quit Connection closed. What this tells me: 1) the host 'mail.i-2000.com' is running a POP3 server (port 110) 2) the host 'mail.i-2000.com' is NOT running an IMAP server (port 143) 3) the host 'i-2000.com' is NOT running a POP3 server. 4) the host 'i-2000.com' is running an SMTP server (port 25) ...that last one is specifically the one that kmail says it can't do! WHat I would try next: Check your kmail config. Make sure the 'incoming' server is mail.i-2000.com, and the 'outgoing' server is 'smtp.i-2000.com'. (they happen to point to the same IP address, but it's different from 'i-2000.com'). Make sure you're using the POP3 protocol to retrieve your mail. HTH, -- Rick Green "I have the heart of a little child, and the brain of a genius. ... and I keep them in a jar under my bed"