Mail: Does it play nice with SSL/TLS

[Gryzor]

Hello everyone,

We're thinking of 'outsourcing' our email to a third party, and before doing that I wanted to know (I have looked around, but all references I've seen are rather oblique) if the forum plays nicely when outgoing mail is accepted by the server through SSL or TLS authentication... is it a matter of just specifying the correct ports, or something else?

Thanks!

[margarett]

I set up several forums using SMTP and it works fine.
Gmail might have some issues due to their security requirements (it worked fine before, I used it more than once, now I don't know).

Just be sure to have proper server configuration (eg, blocked outgoing ports).

[Gryzor]

Server is a bare metal so we can configure it as we like. We're not going with Google Apps but rather Namecheap. As I said, is specifying the relevant ports enough for SSL authentication? May be a silly question, but I'm not exactly an expert in email

Thanks for your reply, margarett!

[margarett]

Yes, it is.
Address is ssl://smtp.whatever.com (or tls:// depending on what the server needs)

[Gryzor]

Ahhh great, I didn't see that in the documentation! Thanks so much once more!!!

[Gryzor]

Hey guys,

So I got us an external mail service as planned, but I can't seem to be able to make the forum play ball...

At first I tried just entering the smtp address, along with the 465 port. Didn't work; I try to release the queue but after several seconds of trying, everything's still there. the log says, simply, "Couldn't get mail server response codes". No idea - is there a way to find more details?

then I tried changing the port, since my server also supports 25/26 for TLS/STARTTLS. Strange thing - I hit Save, the page reloads, I can see the port saying 25 or 26 for a fraction of a second and then it reverts to 465!

Then I remembered the advice here about entering the protocol (ssl://) so I just tried that, but the same thing happens - I hit save, page refreshes and the ssl:// prefix is gone by itself...

Can anyone help me troubleshoot it?

Thanks!

[Gryzor]

Another small question - seems like I can't change settings any more through the interface, so anyone knows where these are stores so I can touch them manually?

[margarett]

Another small question - seems like I can't change settings any more through the interface, so anyone knows where these are stores so I can touch them manually?

Why?
The settings are stored in the smf_settings table, you should be able to identify them easily. Do note that the password isn't stored as plaintext (IIRC it's base64 encoded)

[Gryzor]

Why?

Because, as I described, any changes I do seem to get reverted by themselves mysteriously... darn. I'll try editing the db and leaving the pwd blank then, thanks for the pointer!