190775 - error messages from SMTP server not shown to user

Status: RESOLVED FIXED

(MailNews Core :: Networking: SMTP, defect)

Description

[resigned]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.2.1) Gecko/20021130
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.2.1) Gecko/20021130

My ISP's SMTP server is occasionally replying to attempted sends with:

"421 Too many concurrent SMTP connections. Please try again later."

The bug here is that Mozilla mail&news says something like:

"Unable to find server, or server misconfigured"

- i.e. it gives a misleading explanation (suggesting that the server is not
found) and it doesn't actually say what the error was, nor display the
human-readable error-message which contains the suggestion on what to do - "try
again later".

I would not have been able to discover the problem if I did not have a copy of
Windows 2000, and Outlook Express. Understandably, the ISP refused to accept any
blame until I could tell them what wasn't working!

P.S. it has taken ten (!) minutes to write this bug, because each time I try to
get the dialog box to popup with the error, by the time it pops up, I'm typing,
and the first space I hit dismisses the error message before I have time to read
it. This is really irritating behaviour!

(note: I searched for "SMTP error message display" and found no other bugs on this).

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1.Find an SMTP server which returns an error
2.Stimulate the error
3.

Actual Results:  
Useless dialog box - should AT LEAST do what Outlook does and display the error
message - that is, after all, why SMTP servers have error messages in the first
place!

Expected Results:  
Display the error message

Comment 1

[Ninoschka Baca]

This bug sounds like a duplicate of bug# 69163. 

Comment 2

[resigned]

Thanks for pointing it out, but actually, it is precisely the opposite of the
other bug - in the other bug, the SMTP error message WAS being displayed, and
the reporter was requesting that a more "user-friendly" response be given instead.

I'm noting that in this scenario, no error message is displayed (from the SMTP
server), so the user (even a technically literate one) is completely helpless.

As I noted, if I didn't have outlook express, I would still be arguing with my
ISP over this problem, simply because mozilla wouldn't tell me what was wrong!

Comment 3

[(not reading, please use [e-mail] instead)]

it's similar, but not a dup of #69163.

as adam points out, in this case we have some useful error from the server that
we should show the user.

in #69163 we are showing the user the server error, but the way we present it
could be improved.

Comment 4

[(not reading, please use [e-mail] instead)]

the error we're hitting (internally, see nsSmtpProtocol.cpp) is
NS_ERROR_COULD_NOT_LOGIN_TO_SMTP_SERVER

from composeMsgs.properties:

## @name NS_ERROR_COULD_NOT_LOGIN_TO_SMTP_SERVER
12513=An error occurred sending mail: Unable to connect to SMTP server %S. The
server may be down or may be incorrectly configured. Please verify that your
Mail/News account settings are correct and try again.

in nsSmtpProtocol.cpp, we have code like:

	if(m_responseCode != 220)
	{
		m_urlErrorState = NS_ERROR_COULD_NOT_LOGIN_TO_SMTP_SERVER;
		return(NS_ERROR_COULD_NOT_LOGIN_TO_SMTP_SERVER);
	}

to fix this, I think we'll need to do something like:

        if (m_responseCode != 220)
	{
		nsresult rv = nsExplainErrorDetails(m_runningURL, /* convert m_responseCode to
NS_ERROR code*/, m_responseText.get());
		NS_ASSERTION(NS_SUCCEEDED(rv), "failed to explain SMTP error");

		m_urlErrorState = NS_ERROR_BUT_DONT_SHOW_ALERT;
		return(NS_ERROR_not_sure_which_one_yet);
	}

where we fail to convert, we'd use NS_ERROR_COULD_NOT_LOGIN_TO_SMTP_SERVER.

Comment 5

[Saul Tannenbaum]

I'd like to report similar behavior, in a slightly
different SMTP context.

If one sends a mail message with many recipients,
and the MTA reports a "550 unknown user" the feedback
is only that there is an unknown user, find it
and fix it.

If the mail message has hundreds of recipients, 
that's impossible.

More precise feedback, or an option to send the mail ignoring
the bad address, would be much, much better.

Comment 6

[Ravi Sundaram]

Attachment: I just wanted add a comment, but have to create an attachment?

Comment 7

[Ravi Sundaram]

Attachment: My corrupted prefs.js file attached.

I just submitted an observation that Outlook Express, Telnet and old Netscape
navigator were able to connect to my homegrown pseudo SMTP server. But Mozilla
was not able to and was displaying a very unhelpful generic erorr message.

Then I did this:
I searched for the string 192.168.0.145 on all the files in the computer and
located a file named prefs.js deep below a directory named Mozilla. (Sorry I am
very new to bugzilla). Made a copy and looked the file.
I could figure out that it was associating smtp1 with mail id1 and smtp2 with
mail.id2. It had the default smpt server as smtp4 and had my setting on that. I
edited it all out and substituted smtp1 for all instances of smpt2 and smtp4.
Then overwrote the prefs.js with this edited file. (had mozilla shutdown before
and took another safe copy too). Brought Mozilla back up and sent a mail and
voila!! it connected smoothly with my server and delivered the mail.

I dont know if it is going to help you but I thought I'll let you guys know.

Thanks for keeping everything in ascii.

Comment 8

[Philip Wilk]

This certainly is related to bug 154099 and bug 155172, where people complain
that the SMTP server does not complain when fed a wrong password. It would be
nice to see these error messages somehow.

Comment 9

[Christian Eyrich]

Attachment: proposed patch

This patch adds three new error messages for a more detailed and more correct
alerts.
It also improves the response code and response text preprosessing that helps
in general and also for the issue in bug 189428.

If someone knows a better alternative for the defined names or the error texts
itself, please say so.

Comment 10

[David :Bienvenu]

Comment on attachment 166263 [details] [diff] [review]
proposed patch

An error occurred sending mail: The mail server sent a wrong greeting:	%s

probably would be better to say "sent an incorrect greeting"

Comment 11

[Christian Eyrich]

Attachment: patch v2

This one changes the text for NS_ERROR_SMTP_GREETING according to Davids
suggestion.
It also uses a more elegant way to determine if m_responseCode has to be set to
0 manually.

Comment 12

[Scott MacGregor]

Comment on attachment 167205 [details] [diff] [review]
patch v2

sorry for the delay

Comment 13

[David :Bienvenu]

fix checked in, thx, Christian.