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albertito / chasquid

SMTP (email) server with a focus on simplicity, security, and ease of operation [mirror]
https://blitiri.com.ar/p/chasquid/
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Wording of SMTP error messages #52

Closed xrstf closed 7 months ago

xrstf commented 7 months ago

I just spend some time googling to figure out who Asmodeus is before I realized what the error message is about. For me it was caused by using ssmtp, which always issued a AUTH LOGIN. Switching to msmtp works just fine for sending my first test emails to chasquid.

So my point is: I love and appreciate the whimsey and wish more projects showed a human touch in their outputs, but for a non-expert in SMTP error codes, I would have also appreciated either a more straight forward error message or, as a compromise, a more clear warning log line on stderr.

Just a suggestion though. :heart:

albertito commented 7 months ago

So my point is: I love and appreciate the whimsey and wish more projects showed a human touch in their outputs, but for a non-expert in SMTP error codes, I would have also appreciated either a more straight forward error message or, as a compromise, a more clear warning log line on stderr.

Just a suggestion though. ❤️

Hi! I totally understand, and thanks for the report.

I've tried to be careful with those messages, and don't use them in places that are likely to end up being read by a human.

In this case, that error message corresponds to when a client tries to use a non-supported authentication method, which is something they should not be doing.

I just spend some time googling to figure out who Asmodeus is before I realized what the error message is about. For me it was caused by using ssmtp, which always issued a AUTH LOGIN. Switching to msmtp works just fine for sending my first test emails to chasquid.

This is the second report about issues with how ssmtp implements authentication :(

First one was #46, which I ended up filing #48 for (which is still pending).

I don't want to necessarily change this message, since it really should not be common for a client to try to use non-supported authentication methods (and AFAIK it is not).

I'll see if I can send a patch to ssmtp to improve the logic on their side.

albertito commented 7 months ago

Well, ssmtp seems to not have an upstream, and appears to be unmaintained.

Major distributions take their sources from Debian's copy of the last tarball, and list the Debian package as the homepage. Including Debian itself.

:(

albertito commented 7 months ago

I've added a "Clients" page to the docs that explicitly mentions the client requirements, and adds a note about ssmtp having issues.

I think this is unfortunately the best I can do for now to prevent similar things from happening again :(

I don't want to change my quirky error for a broken unsupported client; and even if the error message was more obvious, it'd still be a source of some confusion regardless.

Hopefully this new docs helps prevent people from wasting too much time with ssmtp :(

xrstf commented 7 months ago

Fair enough :-)