Retrospect Event Handler email to port 587 (authenticated SMTP)

[msiple]

As many of you know, Retrospect for Mac has to use the Retrospect Event Handler and macmail.py scripts to email the results of backups, etc. See here for more info and downloads.

 

My ISP (SBC, er..., AT&T) is in the process of switching to an encrypted connection (SSL) for sending email via SMTP. As it stands, macmail.py cannot send via SSL. Therefore, I had to switch SMTP servers.

 

As I'm a .Mac member, I decided to use that service's SMTP server as it only requires authenticated SMTP. However, AT&T blocks connections over port 25 (SMTP). They do allow authenticated SMTP over port 587. Luckily, 587 can be used with .Mac as well.

 

I first tried changing the property kMailServer attribute in the Retrospect Event Handler Applescript to:

 

smtp.mac.com:587

 

That didn't work so I changed it back to just: smtp.mac.com

 

Next, I went into the macmail.py script (version 0.5) via vi in Terminal and changed line 44 in the auth_send_mail subroutine from:

 

srv = smtplib.SMTP(server)

 

to:

 

srv = smtplib.SMTP(server, 587)

 

That worked!!

 

I know I could've setup MacOS X's internal mail server and used it instead but this requires less setup and doesn't add additional services to be monitored and administered.

 

Thanx. Mark.