79391 - Remove mail.smtp.ssl from mailnews.js?

Status: RESOLVED WORKSFORME

(SeaMonkey :: MailNews: Message Display, defect)

Description

[[e-mail]]

Should we remove that line from mailnews.js?

Before PSM 2.0 (if I understand the chronology right), SMTP over SSL was
controlled by:

pref("mail.smtp.ssl",                       0); // 0 = no, 1 = try, 2 = must use SSL

This was the pref in Navigator if I understand what I've been reading.
This UI was removed in bug 46393.

When SMTP over SSL was re-implemented, it was using new pref:

pref("mail.smtpserver.default.try_ssl", 1);

This feature and prefs UI are described in bug 30321.
--

I'm mentioning this because I think that confusion over this feature "Send SMTP
over SSL" and it's multiple attempts at implementation, has lead to a lot of
confusion, which in turn opened the door for these "sending mail breaks when
(mail.smtpserver.default.try_ssl = 1)" problems.

There were two problems:

Sending silently died w/o an error: 58761 and 78856.
More popular, sending dies and returns an error: 74387

I'm starting to think that if you connect to a server with SSL, then you had the
second problem. If you did not get what I'm going to vaguely assume was a TLS
handshake (58761's server probably did not support this, and 78856 is a failure
to connect), then you get data loss.

I also searched the entire bugzilla database and surfed the mozilla site, I
could not find any explaination of why we are switching prefs in the PSM code.

Comment 1

[rbs]

-> mailnews

Comment 2

[rbs]

-> default owner

Comment 3

[Jason Goodman]

Mozilla build: Linux/i686, 2001110708

Behavior: "Unable to connect to SMTP Server" when SMTP-over-SSL enabled "When 
          available".

What's New: Behavior DOES NOT GO AWAY when SMTP preferences UI is reset to 
          SMTP-over-SSL "Never".

Steps to reproduce:
1) Change directories to Mozilla preferences dir:
	/usr/home/goodmanj/.mozilla/goodmanj/j747v8qq.slt
2) Make a backup copy of prefs.js:
	cp prefs.js prefs_start.js
3) Start Mozilla
	~/mozilla/mozilla
4) Send an e-mail message to self.  Result: successful
5) Open "Mail & Newsgroup Account Settings..." dialog
6) Choose "Outgoing Server (SMTP)"
7) Change "Use secure connection (SSL)" from "Never" to "When Available"
8) Send an e-mail message to self.  Result: "Unable to connect to SMTP Server"'
9) Open Mail & News account settings, reset "Use secure connection" to "Never".
10) Send an e-mail message to self.  Result: STILL "Unable to connect to SMTP 
    Server"
11) Quit Mozilla
12) Find out what preferences have changed:
	% diff prefs.js prefs_start.js
	127a128
	> user_pref("mail.identity.id2.smtpServer", "");
13) Restore the old prefs file
	% cp prefs_start.js prefs.js
14) Restart Mozilla, and send a new test message.  Result: successful

Comments:
  It's not just that the "Use SSL" pref is broken, it's also that the pref
*stays* broken until you delete the above line from the prefs.js file.  (And it
took me hours and hours to figure out that was what was wrong.)

Other notes:
I appear to have two completely redundant (and potentially incompatible) sets of
SMTP information in the prefs.js file.  This seems to relate to the pre/post-PSM
changes discussed here:

% grep 'smtp' prefs.js
user_pref("mail.identity.id2.smtpServer", "");
user_pref("mail.smtp.defaultserver", "smtp1");
user_pref("mail.smtp.ssl", 1);
user_pref("mail.smtp_name", "goodmanj");
user_pref("mail.smtpserver.smtp1.auth_method", 0);
user_pref("mail.smtpserver.smtp1.hostname", "nsit-email.uchicago.edu");
user_pref("mail.smtpserver.smtp1.try_ssl", 0);
user_pref("mail.smtpserver.smtp1.username", "");
user_pref("mail.smtpservers", "smtp1");
user_pref("network.hosts.smtp_server", "midway.uchicago.edu");

Note the presence of both "mail.smtp.ssl" and "mail.smtpserver.smtp1.try_ssl",
and both "network.hosts.smtp_server" and "mail.smtpserver.smtp1.hostname".  Both
of these pairs can have different values.  The "old" pref names (mail.smtp.ssl
and network.hosts.smtp_server) appear to be carried over from my old Netscape
4.7 prefs file -- they do not appear if I delete prefs.js and reconfigure
Mozilla from scratch.  

However, the "sticky prefs" problem is independent of the "redundant prefs"
problem.

Comment 4

[Jacek Piskozub]

Jason: What you report here is a duplicate of bug 108912, actually fixed
yesterday (11/8). Please use a fresher build. Take note that I descruibed
identical way of triggering the problem in bug 109115 (a dup of 108912).

Comment 5

[Magnus Melin [:mkmelin]]

http://mxr.mozilla.org/comm-central/search?string=mail.smtp.ssl%20&filter=^[^\0]*$
->WFM