1495564 - Started getting "SMTP error from remote server for TEXT command, reason: 552 5.2.0 Invalid 7bit DATA" and every email sent to some addresses is bouncing with this message.

Status: RESOLVED INVALID

(Thunderbird :: Untriaged, defect)

Description

[cynthia]

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; Win64; x64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/69.0.3497.100 Safari/537.36

Steps to reproduce:

I don't know if you could reproduce it.  Starting 9/30/18 every email I send to an address @comcast.net and several other domains results in a Mail delivery failed returning mail to sender.  The explanation is always "This message was created automatically by mail delivery software.

A message that you sent could not be delivered to one or more of
its recipients. This is a permanent error. The following address(es)
failed:

*******@comcast.net:
SMTP error from remote server for TEXT command, host: mx2.comcast.net (68.87.20.5) reason: 552 5.2.0 Invalid 7bit DATA"


Actual results:

This happens every time I send a message to one of these accounts.   First occurrence was with an email that I used the Mail Merge add on.  These addresses are ones I have been in regular correspondence with for years without difficulty.  I can send without trouble from the webmail page but not from Thunderbird.  I have tried both unicode and western formatting.  I have waited 48 hours and retried.  Nothing works.  The only similar issue I could find was on an Italian language support forum and several users there had the same issue but with other email destinations.  No solution was posted and there was lots of data associating it as a Thunderbird issue.  


Expected results:

The message should have sent and been received without error.

Comment 1

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

Version 59 is quite old.  Do you perhaps mean version 60?

Comment 2

[cynthia]

My apologizes I am not sure why it reads as 59.  It is actually 52.9.1 (32 bit) on the release update channel and claims it is up to date.  Having it check for updates was the first thing I did when I ran into trouble.

Comment 3

[cynthia]

The previous comment brought the age of my version to my attention, even though it had been updating itself frequently.  I just installed a fresh copy of 60 from the website, still 32 bit.  After verifying the setup of my addresses I tried again to send to one of the problematic destinations.  It failed yet again with the same error message.  

Addresses are formatted as imap.  

I appreciate your help.

Comment 4

[Matt]

I would assume we are seeing another server configured for only 7bit data.  Perhaps like the Yahoo issues.

Could you change the setting in the config editor for mail.strictly_mime to true and try sending to one of those problematical addresses.

To set the value mail.strictly_mime to true in Thunderbird go to Tools -> Options select the Advanced and then select the General tab.  At the bottom right click Config Editor button and acknowledge the warning message.  Type the string mail.strictly_mime into the top of the config editor to locate the option, add it if not present.

Comment 6

[cynthia]

(In reply to Matt from comment #4)
> I would assume we are seeing another server configured for only 7bit data. 
> Perhaps like the Yahoo issues.
> 
> Could you change the setting in the config editor for mail.strictly_mime to
> true and try sending to one of those problematical addresses.
> 
> To set the value mail.strictly_mime to true in Thunderbird go to Tools ->
> Options select the Advanced and then select the General tab.  At the bottom
> right click Config Editor button and acknowledge the warning message.  Type
> the string mail.strictly_mime into the top of the config editor to locate
> the option, add it if not present.

I did as you suggested.  It worked.  Will this be addressed in one of the upcoming updates or will I need to reset it each time Thunderbird updates?  

I looked at the duplicate bug.  The error was the same but my messages had not contained any of the special characters referenced in that report.  Just ordinary English punctuation same as I have used for years with the same recipients.  

Thank you very much for your help.  I appreciate getting this working again.

Comment 7

[Matt]

I can report the same issue when sending to TalkTalk servers.  Interestingly the encoding used when the message was transmitted via GMX was 8bit as setup in Thunderird.  Recomposing the mail using their web interface generated simple HTML with no sign of a text part or content transfer encoding.

My original bounce had 
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8; format=flowed
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit

Comment 8

[Jorg K (CEST = GMT+2)]

Oh boy, what this the Comcast, Yahoo, AT&T combo get wrong now? See bug 1435903 comment #28 and below.

Comment 9

[Matt]

(In reply to Jorg K (GMT+2) from comment #8)
> Oh boy, what this the Comcast, Yahoo, AT&T combo get wrong now? See bug
> 1435903 comment #28 and below.

Jorg, What I saw was a bounce from the receiving servers,  not the SMTP being used to send mail.  Are we going to have to just use 7bit because the elephants in the room charging their customers can not do their jobs right.

Comment 10

[Jorg K (CEST = GMT+2)]

(In reply to Matt from comment #9)
> Jorg, What I saw was a bounce from the receiving servers, ...
But the receiving serve is from the herd of elephants, no?
SMTP error from remote server for TEXT command, host: mx2.comcast.net (68.87.20.5) reason: 552 5.2.0 Invalid 7bit DATA

That Yahoo can't process 8bit encode mail for coming up to a year now is truly a scandal.

Comment 11

[Matt]

(In reply to Jorg K (GMT+2) from comment #10)
> (In reply to Matt from comment #9)
> > Jorg, What I saw was a bounce from the receiving servers, ...
> But the receiving serve is from the herd of elephants, no?
> SMTP error from remote server for TEXT command, host: mx2.comcast.net
> (68.87.20.5) reason: 552 5.2.0 Invalid 7bit DATA
> 
> That Yahoo can't process 8bit encode mail for coming up to a year now is
> truly a scandal.

In my case it was 

SMTP error from remote server for TEXT command, host: mx.talktalk.net (62.24.202.42) reason: 552 5.2.0 Invalid 7bit DATA  
The sending SMTP was GMX.  
I mentioned it on this bug because I think the rot is spreading.

Comment 12

[jeff]

The strictly_mime change in comments 4 and 8 works on the same issue when emailing to "Road Runner" (service of Time Warner, now Spectrum).

Rot, indeed.

Comment 13

[Fritz]

(In reply to Matt from comment #4)
> To set the value mail.strictly_mime to true in Thunderbird go to Tools ->
> Options select the Advanced and then select the General tab.  At the bottom
> right click Config Editor button and acknowledge the warning message.  Type
> the string mail.strictly_mime into the top of the config editor to locate
> the option, add it if not present.

I have no option «Options» in my «Tools»

Comment 14

[Jorg K (CEST = GMT+2)]

On Linux/Mac it's called "Preferences" and maybe under "Edit". Have you never looked at any configuration option whatsoever?

Comment 15

[Fritz]

(In reply to Jorg K (GMT+2) from comment #14)
> On Linux/Mac it's called "Preferences" and maybe under "Edit". Have you
> never looked at any configuration option whatsoever?

Thank you. I've found it under Preferences/Advanced/General.

I've never made any changes using the «Config Editor» because until now there are no needs to change anything.

Fritz

Comment 16

[Fritz]

The change Matt suggests did it for me too.
Thank you all.

Fritz

Comment 17

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

So this should be closed INVALID?

Comment 18

[Fritz]

(In reply to Wayne Mery (:wsmwk) from comment #17)
> So this should be closed INVALID?

In my opinion: Yes