Evolution

James Wilkinson ubuntu at westexe.demon.co.uk
Tue May 17 12:29:28 UTC 2005


alain.muls at telenet.be wrote:
> MAIL FROM command failed: Please try again later

MAIL FROM is part of the SMTP communication between Evolution and the
smart mail host / SMTP server you set up.

It could be that the server expects an encrypted connection. It could be
that it doesn't like the e-mail address you've provided. It might even
expect you to fetch mail before it will let you send. Or it might, just,
be a problem with the server at the other end.

You've got as far as making a connection to a computer that's running
SMTP. So it's *probably* the right one, although that may be worth
checking (your ISP may have different servers for outgoing and incoming
mail, and you might be connecting to the incoming one...)

It can't be anything to do with the contents of your e-mail or to whom
you're sending it: the server hasn't seen that yet.

More details:

When a mail program makes a SMTP connection to another computer, the
connection looks rather like this:

220 westexe.demon.co.uk ESMTP Postfix (Ubuntu)
HELO localhost
250 westexe.demon.co.uk
MAIL FROM:<ubuntu at westexe.demon.co.uk>
250 Ok
RCPT TO:<ubuntu at westexe.demon.co.uk>
250 Ok
DATA
354 End data with <CR><LF>.<CR><LF>

The lines starting in numbers are responses from Postfix, the program to
which I'm connecting. The rest I just typed in...

As you can see, I type in a HELO [1] specifying the name of this
computer. That's not particularly trusted, or indeed used anywhere else.
Next I type in a MAIL FROM: and an address. This is where the e-mail is
coming from.

And it's that which is failing. And it's failing with a "try again
later" type error code, which is being sent by the server.

I don't use Evolution: I don't know if there's any way to watch the SMTP
conversation.

If necessary, you can open a terminal and type
telnet $SERVERNAME smtp
(where $SERVERNAME is your outgoing e-mail server), and type stuff in
the way I showed you. This might illuminate matters. Or it might not...

Hope this helps,

James.

[1] or EHLO: ESMTP is beyond the scope of this e-mail.
[2] It's not necessarily the same as in the e-mail header (list e-mails
have MAIL FROM:<ubuntu-users-bounces at lists.ubuntu.com> so the Mailman
mailing list software can see if mail is bouncing).

RCPT TO: specifies where the e-mail is going. That's how this e-mail got
to your e-mail account despite the headers say it's going to an account
on lists.ubuntu.com.

-- 
E-mail address: james | ... in our completely unscientific usability study,
@westexe.demon.co.uk  | it took our subjects less than 10 seconds to locate
                      | the Solitaire game. We're not sure what else the
                      | corporate desktop needs. -- Michael Hall, Serverwatch




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