SeaMonkey RECEIVES but can't connect to server to SEND email

User Help for Seamonkey and Mozilla Suite
guest666
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Joined: July 17th, 2005, 12:13 am

SeaMonkey RECEIVES but can't connect to server to SEND email

Post by guest666 »

i still have and still use the old mozilla suite, it still works great. Browses, sends, receives email etc. all that. SeaMonkey worked well enough now to have made it into my default browser recently. BUT, two days ago (and i DIDN'T up date or upgrade to 1.1.4 yet) i began getting a port 25 error problem with Comcast broadband when attempting to SEND an email. SeaMonkey still RECEIVES email fine (different port) and it still connects to the www correctly as before. Comcast tech supt says they don't support mozilla, so no help there. If i want to SEND email now, i have to use mozilla suite. My pc is an old iMac SL graphite PPC3. My OS = OS X 10.3.9 i don't always remember what i have done or done wrong (due to old age and creeping senility) but i have tried making it work enough times now to realize i need someone else to give me a new clue. i presently have 1.1.4 installed (just to see if updating would help but no improvement) i can't figure how to perhaps adjust the native iMac firewall settings to see if that might help. (the native mac firewall it is all i use, no anti virus, no other firewall. Deleted all trace of Norton years ago. i don't always get the exact same error message. i once was asked for my comcast password. i once got to see the url it was trying to connect to but these glimpses are fleeting and forgetable. If this is a highjack problem it is damned hard to locate and display where it is hidden. i also have the Little Snitch software installed in my system preferences. It has 3 mozilla url ports blocked (80.77+) but no seamonkey mentioned there. Nothing about port 25. i don't even know if port 25 is where it should be TRYING to connect. Sorry to be such a dunce.
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rsx11m
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Post by rsx11m »

I don't know exactly how to connect to the Comcast SMTP server, but the port numbers are usually 25 (doesn't work for you) and the lesser known 465 and 587 ports. The latter ones usually work with TLS or SSL encryption. Thus, this should leave you with a sufficient small number of possible choices to try them one-by-one, and hopefully one of them will let you through.

As a general remark: If you ask the tech support "How do I configure SeaMonkey" you will get the response "we don't support Mozilla products" if they don't want to answer. If you ask "What is the SMTP port number and do I need to enable encryption?" instead, you may have better chances to get a real response...
doesterr
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Can receive but can't send emails thru Yahoo

Post by doesterr »

My problem is almost identical to the above.

I run XP Pro, with Seamonkey. My wife and I have separate email boxes. Mine works fine, both receiving and sending, but my wife's won't send.

The server settings in the two accounts are, to the best of my ability to investigate, identical, that is,

The target server is ATT.YAHOO.COM. The port, specified as per an email from Yahoo, is 465, and also per instructions from Yahoo, SSL is checked. Yahoo support denies knowledge of Seamonkey, although in an email and again today by phone they gave me these settings, then told me to speak to Mozilla.

I have checked for typing errors, and find no extra spaces or double dots or the like.

Dave
rsx11m
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Post by rsx11m »

For both of you, there are some further hints in an Knowledge Base article at http://kb.mozillazine.org/Cannot_send_mail and http://kb.mozillazine.org/Connection_errors_-_SMTP (those are written for Thunderbird but apply to SeaMonkey as well).

Even if the problem appears to be identical, there is a variety of possible errors that may prevent you from sending out any e-mail. If the problem persist, please follow the list of "pieces of information about the failure" in the second article when posting a reply.
doesterr
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Post by doesterr »

Okay, I've got a clue. I find that IF MY WIFE (by me in this case ) IS SIGNED IN at Yahoo, and I access her email and try to send, it will go.

But if I am an what I'll call the generic Yahoo homepage, go to the email and try to send, I get the following:

"The message could not be sent because connecting to SMTP server SMTP.ATT.YAHOO.COM failed. Thje server may be unavailable or is refusing SMTP connections. Please verify that your SMTP server setting is correct and try again, or else contact your network administrator."

Guest666, you might see if this sort of thing is happening to you.

Dave Oesterreich
guest666
Posts: 49
Joined: July 17th, 2005, 12:13 am

more

Post by guest666 »

rsx11m wrote:I don't know exactly how to connect to the Comcast SMTP server, but the port numbers are usually 25 (doesn't work for you) and the lesser known 465 and 587 ports. The latter ones usually work with TLS or SSL encryption. Thus, this should leave you with a sufficient small number of possible choices to try them one-by-one, and hopefully one of them will let you through.

As a general remark: If you ask the tech support "How do I configure SeaMonkey" you will get the response "we don't support Mozilla products" if they don't want to answer. If you ask "What is the SMTP port number and do I need to enable encryption?" instead, you may have better chances to get a real response...


As for my own problem, which continues:
In looking further at my user account server settings for seamonkey (after looking thoroughly at those for mozilla suite which sucessfully uses port 25, both as default and as the chosen one) i found that in seamonkey the default server for outgoing was listed as port 110. since this did not agree with the one for mozilla suite which uses port 25 (and since mozilla suite works to send outgoing email while seamonkey does not) i tried changing THAT setting. It WOULD permit me to change it to 25 and so i did that temporarily, but the default of 110 could not be altered and so 110 remained as default. However changing this to 25 made no difference since it continued to fail to connect in order to send and additionally now failed to receive, so eventually i changed THAT back How is it that it wants to use 110 ? i have no clue. "Little Snitch" had displayed that it WAS trying to connect to SMTP at comcast at port 25 so i'd guess the default was being ignored during that transaction. Comcast had recently tightened up on its "anti" software. And for a time some of my contacts were being refused. i had to go to the comcast page and unclick all "anti" buttons after which my friends could get through to me again but this was a couple of months ago. The iMac firewall doesn't "care" what incoming i get. If there were a button to check or uncheck to permit comcast to ping me, it has never been needed. If there is a way or a place to allow tunneling for mozilla or seamonkey in the iMac firewall, it isn't obvious and shouldn't be the problem anyway since turning off the firewall was the first trouble shooting tip i had tried.

i don't find seamonkey listed at all as seamonkey in any of my "little snitch" preferences. There are 3 "mozilla" port 80.+ settings set to never allow, these only relate to stuflt. But, nothing at all is there on the subject of ports 110 or 25. The Little snitch software will always ask permission at any time my software seeks to connect to anything and the choices buttons are always "allow until quit", "always allow", "never allow". Typically i allow till quit. As to yahoo, i use this without problem my incoming and outgoing yahoo and this is probably because it is set to default to mozilla suite.

So, (1) If the problem is password at comcast, how would i go about changing it for seamonkey back to the correct one, if the correct one IS what is being used by mozilla suite and thus working to connect.
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rsx11m
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Post by rsx11m »

doesterr wrote:I find that IF MY WIFE (by me in this case ) IS SIGNED IN at Yahoo, and I access her email and try to send, it will go. But if I am an what I'll call the generic Yahoo homepage, go to the email and try to send, I get the following: "The message could not be sent because connecting to SMTP server SMTP.ATT.YAHOO.COM failed...."
What exactly does if I am at the generic Yahoo homepage mean, are you talking about webmail then? The message you mention would typically appear if a connection to the server could not be established by SeaMonkey (that's not webmail then though, unless you use an extension), thus by a wrong port number or if the server rejects the connection.

guest666 wrote:In looking further at my user account server settings for seamonkey i found that in seamonkey the default server for outgoing was listed as port 110. since this did not agree with the one for mozilla suite which uses port 25. ... How is it that it wants to use 110 ?
Port 110 is the default for POP, not for SMTP. Were you looking at the right place? In the Account Settings, the SMTP server options are at the very bottom, thus not within the settings of your actual account. With your individual settings for a specific account, you would choose then one of the SMTP servers configured with the very-bottom option. That's frequently confusing.

guest666 wrote:i don't find seamonkey listed at all as seamonkey in any of my "little snitch" preferences. ... Typically i allow till quit. As to yahoo, i use this without problem my incoming and outgoing yahoo and this is probably because it is set to default to mozilla suite.
Hmm, one would expect your firewall software to have a separate set of rules for SeaMonkey, since it is a separate application different from Mozilla. My firewall software on Windows will actually ask after each update to acknowledge a legitimate change of the SeaMonkey executable. I'm not familiar with the MacOS firewalls, but your's seem to filter by application too and not just by ports and protocols.

guest666 wrote:So, (1) If the problem is password at comcast, how would i go about changing it for seamonkey back to the correct one, if the correct one IS what is being used by mozilla suite and thus working to connect.
You can go into the Password Manager (under Tools) and remove any stored passwords there, then it should ask you for entering a password as soon as a connection is established. If you don't have an SMTP password set and it is not asking for any, then likely the connection isn't established in the first place and you won't get to the point where the password is needed. This should narrow it down to a connection problem then, at least.
guest666
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Joined: July 17th, 2005, 12:13 am

no sending in seamonkey

Post by guest666 »

yes i acknowlege that having slept poorly i mis-spoke about my server settings. As you say, the incoming pop3 setting is for port 110 (both mozilla and seamonkey and it is definitely not for the outgoing server. The outgoing server is (as you very correctly remind) SMTP port 25. I have also gone to password manager to correct that pesky password problem by deleting it. i noticed as i was about to delete it that while every thing else listed there had a username the smpt had only a <> instead of a username.
Perhaps this is the thing that is gumming up the works? i shall go look again at the account settings to see if that can be explained there by some dummy act on my part. Meanwhile you can look upon the Little snitch displays by going to the imageshack links below:

mozilla sends :

URL=http://img409.imageshack.us/my.php?image=mozillasuitefb1.png]Image[/URL]

seamonkey doesn't send:

Image

error message as it appears on my screen:

Image
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rsx11m
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Post by rsx11m »

Quick question: Why does Mozilla connect to smtp.comcast.net (as expected) but SeaMonkey connects to almailhost.ops.asp.att.net and then complains about being unable to connect to smtp.comcast.net? Are those two servers equivalent?
guest666
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Joined: July 17th, 2005, 12:13 am

seamonkey still won't connect to port 25

Post by guest666 »

Well i quite butchered that last post and have no idea why all 3 of the urls, don't render in this posting since i can see what i am typing and cutting and pasting and it is all there in the body of the message but doesn't render in the preview. Trying again. i don't know what to make of that "Quick question: Why does Mozilla connect to smtp.comcast.net (as expected) but SeaMonkey connects to almailhost.ops.asp.att.net and then complains about being unable to connect to smtp.comcast.net?" . Are those two servers equivalent?"

perhaps on your screen it DID render correctly! i at first thought that att might have somehow "highjacked" my intended server but sometimes mozilla will go to that one too and then work fine sending as well as receiving. So yes maybe comcast and att are ganging up on me.

mozilla works :

URL=http://img409.imageshack.us/my.php?image=mozillasuitefb1.png]Image[/URL]

seamonkey doesn't :

Image

error message :

Image
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rsx11m
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Post by rsx11m »

Thanks for reposting the images, I could see them all in your original post (copy-pasting the 1st link). As for the DNS entries, smtp.comcast.net resolves to a couple of IP addresses, but some of them have a reverse lookup of almailhost.ops.asp.att.net (e.g., 206.18.177.17 and 204.127.225.17). What this tells us is that SeaMonkey obviously tries to connect to the intended SMTP server, since it resolves the name to the correct address and it shows up with the "correct" reverse entry (even though it's a completely different name, not sure if this may be a problem?). Do you get the error message right away or after some time-out delay?
guest666
Posts: 49
Joined: July 17th, 2005, 12:13 am

SeaMonkey continues to defy my all efforts

Post by guest666 »

rsx11m wrote:Thanks for reposting the images, I could see them all in your original post (copy-pasting the 1st link). As for the DNS entries, smtp.comcast.net resolves to a couple of IP addresses, but some of them have a reverse lookup of almailhost.ops.asp.att.net (e.g., 206.18.177.17 and 204.127.225.17). What this tells us is that SeaMonkey obviously tries to connect to the intended SMTP server, since it resolves the name to the correct address and it shows up with the "correct" reverse entry (even though it's a completely different name, not sure if this may be a problem?). Do you get the error message right away or after some time-out delay?
it comes fairly soon, after a delay of maybe 20 to 30 seconds. (it is broadband) Since my last post i deleted (again) all the existing seamonkey in the library prefs deleted plist and saved only the mozilla profile folder. i jumped through all the setup wizard hoops and made sure the accounts were all in order. Port 25 is the default for smtp Little Snitch displayed that it was trying to connect to smtp at port 25 and my password is absolutely correct. Still it receives without being able to send email. Oh, also i had sent an email to Gunnar when the problem first started occurring (using mozilla suite) to see if he had any insight to share but he has not gotten back to me. Suppose the Atty General was secretly trying to spy on me and scrood up one of my settings ?
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guest666
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Post by guest666 »

guest666 wrote:
rsx11m wrote:Thanks for reposting the images, I could see them all in your original post (copy-pasting the 1st link). As for the DNS entries, smtp.comcast.net resolves to a couple of IP addresses, but some of them have a reverse lookup of almailhost.ops.asp.att.net (e.g., 206.18.177.17 and 204.127.225.17). What this tells us is that SeaMonkey obviously tries to connect to the intended SMTP server, since it resolves the name to the correct address and it shows up with the "correct" reverse entry (even though it's a completely different name, not sure if this may be a problem?). Do you get the error message right away or after some time-out delay?
it comes fairly soon, after a delay of maybe 20 to 30 seconds. (it is broadband) Since my last post i deleted (again) all the existing seamonkey in the library prefs deleted plist and saved only the mozilla profile folder. i jumped through all the setup wizard hoops and made sure the accounts were all in order. Port 25 is the default for smtp Little Snitch displayed that it was trying to connect to smtp at port 25 and my password is absolutely correct. Still it receives without being able to send email. Oh, also i had sent an email to Gunnar when the problem first started occurring (using mozilla suite) to see if he had any insight to share but he has not gotten back to me. Suppose the Atty General was secretly trying to spy on me and scrood up one of my settings ?
by the way these two posts this one and the previous one WERE using seamonkey somehow, by way of yahoo.mail
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rsx11m
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Post by rsx11m »

To exclude the possibility that the DNS name mismatch might be a problem, I've temporarily changed the entry of my own SMTP server to a different name than would resolve through a reverse DNS lookup. This works for me with SeaMonkey 1.1.4, thus I think this reason can be excluded . In theory, everything looks fine on your end, thus it should work (but unfortunately doesn't...).

20-30 seconds isn't quite "immediate", thus it would be interesting to know if SeaMonkey is just trying to connect or actually gets a connection. Are you able to monitor active connections with your firewall software? (or try netstat from the command line, if this is available on OS X).

guest666 wrote:by the way these two posts this one and the previous one WERE using seamonkey somehow, by way of yahoo.mail
What exactly do you mean with by way of yahoo.mail? You can browse with SeaMonkey and can receive mail, but not sending. Or are there other things not working?

And of course, anybody else reading this topic is welcome to join the discussion with fresh ideas! :-)
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BenoitRen
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Post by BenoitRen »

i noticed as i was about to delete it that while every thing else listed there had a username the smpt had only a <> instead of a username.
Perhaps this is the thing that is gumming up the works?

Personally, I think this is worth looking into.
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