All,
Recently I've been
unable to send out e-mail through my MSU e-mail account that I had configured in
Microsoft Outlook 2003. Upon further investigation it turned out that the
openrelay.msu.edu server was decommissioned and that was the outgoing SMTP
server I was using. No problem, I'll just switch my SMTP server to what my
POP3 server is, mail.msu.edu and set it to use SSL.
Using the web page
at http://help.msu.edu/mail/documentation/outlookxp.htm I
configured my Outlook 2003 mail client to send mail using mail.msu.edu over SSL
using port 25. I then tried to send a few messages and they just sat in my
outbox. Eventually it reported an error telling me that the mail.msu.edu
server does not support SSL, which I knew was incorrect. In an attempt to
appease Outlook, I changed my Outlook server settings so that SMTP was NOT over
SSL. I then triggered the send/receive and the message went out instantly
but also came back just as fast telling me that the server mail.msu.edu did not
support relaying.
I re-enabled SSL
over SMTP and tried another message. This one also sat in my outbox and
would return the error message about the server not supporting SSL.
Thinking that maybe it was my Norton Internet Security 2004 or Norton Antivirus
2004 I disabled them both, closed Outlook and went back into Outlook. I
deleted the message still in my outbox and tried to send another one through
mail.msu.edu, it still didn't go out.
After a e-mail to [log in to unmask] (Tuesday, no response) and a phone
call to them at 2-6200 (Friday morning) I was still without answer or
solution. I even deleted my MSU mail account in Outlook and re-created it
to see if that would correct the problem, nope.
This is where the
story takes a strange twist, I think. I went to another computer here in
the lab and configured a Outlook Express account for myself to mail.msu.edu
using SMTP port 25 over SSL to send message. I then created a message and
was able to send it without any problems! Very
strange.
So at that point I
arrived at the conclusion that it must be something with my laptop and port 25
over SSL. So I went over to mozilla.org and downloaded a copy of
Thunderbird to try from my machine (since you don't have to run through an
installer and all that jazz). I configured my account for mail.msu.edu
and, when setting up the SMTP over SSL, it defaulted to port 465. Just for
kicks I tried to send a message through Thunderbird using port 465 for the SMTP
server over SSL and the message went out! So I changed to port 25 for the
SMTP in Thunderbird and tried sending a message but could
not.
Finally I changed my
Outlook 2003 to use port 465 for SMTP over SSL and was able to send messages
out. I re-enabled NIS 2004 and NAV 2004 and was still able to send
message. Curiously I checked http://help.msu.edu/mail/documentation/netscape.htm for
the mozilla.org mail client configuration and it shows port 25 as the one to
use, not 465.
Long story for a
short answer I suppose, but I wanted to share it in case someone else runs into
this same problem.
-----------------------------------
Troy D. Murray
Michigan State
University
College of Human Medicine
Department of
Medicine
Immunohematology and Serology Laboratory
B228 Life Science
Building
East Lansing, MI 48824-1034
(E) [log in to unmask]
(P)
517.432.3545
(F) 517.353.5436
(W) http://msuhla.chm.msu.edu
MSN: [log in to unmask]
AIM:
troymurray72
