Re: kmail SMTP problems
> On Wed, 17 Jan 2007 20:11:46 +0100
> Robert Epprecht <epprecht@solnet.ch> wrote:
[about problems setting up Kmail to use smtp on google mail accounts]
This is just to report to anybody following this thread: My Kmail is
working now with smtp on google mail. Unfortunately I have no idea
why it didn't work before and does now. I set it up on 5 different
accounts, one of them was working immediately on the others I had
to fiddle around with different settings (see below) try again and
again and then sooner or later (in most cases it was later) it
started working. The frustrating thing is, that I never saw an error
message and have no idea if I did something wrong or if there's a
bug somewhere, which I should report... Each account behaved
differently (!) and I was not able to find a setup, that would just work.
I think this is a big problem with this type of GUI applications:
If it does *not* work, how do you find out what's wrong? Not even
starting Kmail from a terminal provided any diagnostic error messages.
This does not feel like Linux to set it up, but like another well
known OS ;-) Why can't a GUI program provide the the possibility
to give (meaningful) error messages to the user who wants to see it?
If somebody is struggling with the same issue (google tells me I'm
not the only one to do so) these are the parameters I fiddled with.
(Some of them *might* have an influence, but I was not able to find out)
* Changing 'googlemail' to 'gmail' in smtp and pop host names.
* Omitting the '@gmail' or '@googlemail' part of the username
(contrary of what Google tells you to do on
http://mail.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?answer=13287&topic=1556)
* Setting smtp port to 465 (like Google tells you) but then 'check
servers possibilities' (or similar) from Kmail settings, which
will set the port back to 25. Leave it there.
* Switching 'check mail on startup' on (then leave Kmail, start and
leave again) and set it back to 'off'
* Do not allow 8-bit transfer but use QP (my test messages had
german umlauts in them)
* It looks to me as if Google passwords had problems with some
signs other then characters and chiffres (if this is true,
it's quite a problem IMHO)
* Even the language settings of the KDE desktop might have had some
influence...
I'm very sorry that I cannot give better information and hope somebody
will be able to do so...
BTW: my Kmail users do not want to enter the password every time they
want to get or send mail. (This also rules out Kwallet, so I do not
use it, which might be wrong...) Given the fact that they do not care too
much about security they want Kmail to store the password. This worked
on one account, but the others bothered the users again and again asking
for passwords. It has stopped to do so on three accounts, but not on the
others (no idea why). diffing the ~/.kde/share/config/kmailrc does not
show anything that seams relevant. Another very strange issue...
Thanks to everybody who tried to help me,
Robert
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