Re: [nmh-workers] Need help with sending mail

[Ken Hornstein]

First off ... please don't construe anything I say as an attack on you.
I would honestly like some feedback about how we could improve our
documentation.  If you could let us know what we need to improve, that
would be great; I view the failure here of you not figuring this out
as a problem with our documentation.  I think this information is mostly
all there, but not organized well so it's hard to put it all together;
I've been in the middle of this for so long it's hard to remember how
this appears to someone who comes into it cold.

Ralph gave you the right starting advice, but ...

>credentials: file:netrc

You have a file called "netrc" in your Mail directory?  If you want
to use a file called ".netrc" in your HOME directory, maybe you want
to use "legacy" in the credentials entry?  (The mh-profile man page says
the home directory is searched for the credentials file, but when I look at
that code I am not sure that is true).  I thought reading the man
page that it was obvious that when we say "file:netrc" you are supposed
to put the name of YOUR credentials file where "netrc" is, but maybe
it isn't.

So, a few other problems I see:

- post(8) doesn't read the profile, so putting an entry under "post" in there
  won't do anything.  You probably want to put that all under "send".
- You don't specify the -sasl flag, which is really what kicks off all
  authentication nowadays (with the exception of the old-style POP).  Reading
  the man page for send(1) and post(8) I thought that it was clear that
  the authentication only happens under -sasl (it's the only place where
  -user is mentioned), but again, I would appreciate some feedback as to
  how we could improve this.

What I would do is try running send(1) testing out a few flags on the
command line until you get something that works.  What I think you
should start with is:

        -snoop
        -sasl
        -mts smtp
        -server smtp.land1.com
        -tls

(Port 587 is the default so you shouldn't need that, and if you are using
that port you probably are NOT using -initialtls).

If authentication starts properly, you should be prompted for a username
and password; once you get that part working you can then put stuff in
your profile and start using your .netrc.  If that doesn't work then
please post the output from -snoop.

--Ken