[sylpheed:31534] Sylpheed and Gmail's (broken?) handling of the sender's QUIT command

Celejar celejar at gmail.com
Thu Jul 19 22:18:48 JST 2007


Hi,

I've been successfully relaying mail with Sylpheed through Gmail's smtp
server (smtp.gmail.com) for quite some time.  Today, for the first
time, Sylpheed has begun to consistently pop up an error box upon
concluding the transmission, although the mails are still apparently
getting through successfully.

The error reads:

Error
Error occurred while sending the message

I assume this is due to Gmail's (incorrect?) handling of the sender's
QUIT command.  Testing with swak, I see that the entire smtp
conversation occurs correctly, but after swaks sends 'QUIT', it reports
"*** Remote host closed connection unexpectedly."  IIUC, Gmail is
prematurely breaking the connection upon receiving QUIT, in violation
of RFC 2821, which stipulates:

> 4.1.1.10 QUIT (QUIT)
> 
>  This command specifies that the receiver MUST send an OK reply, and
>    then close the transmission channel.
> 
>    The receiver MUST NOT intentionally close the transmission channel
>    until it receives and replies to a QUIT command (even if there was an
>    error).

Gmail's dubious behavior has been noted here [0] and here [1].

Sylpheed's insistence on complaining about this with a pop-up, though,
is annoying. As I mentioned above, I haven't seen his until today,
although I believe Gmail has been doing this for a while.  Is there any
way to tell Sylpheed to ignore this problem?  Even though this isn't
Sylpheed's fault, I think there should be a menu setting such as
"Ignore uncivil hang-up on QUIT (for broken, non-RFC compliant MTAs)".
Do I need to write a patch myself? Is anyone else seeing / bothered by
this?

[0] http://osdir.com/ml/mail.nail.devel/2007-01/msg00016.html
[1]
http://groups.google.com/group/comp.mail.eudora.mac/browse_thread/thread/3477c09b2e4c9b31/94effb2c73ffc21d

Celejar
--
mailmin.sourceforge.net - remote access via secure (OpenPGP) email
ssuds.sourceforge.net - A Simple Sudoku Solver and Generator



More information about the Sylpheed mailing list