[Twisted-Python] SMTP authentication

Itamar Turner-Trauring itamar at futurefoundries.com
Tue Jul 24 07:29:14 MDT 2012


***

On Tue, Jul 24, 2012 at 6:36 AM, Sarah Addis <sarahaddis3 at gmail.com> wrote:

>  I am currently trying to use a SMTP server to send emails. However I
> keep getting the same python authentication error outlined below. The SMTP
> server requires authentication and can advertise CRAM-MD5 as an accepted
> authentication method but fails when the client tries to use it. No other
> methods are tried after the failure, Python's smtplib just raises an
> Exception.
>
As Phil mentioned, a code example would be useful (what API are you
calling, at the very least?).

A priori, however, this issue might happen for a number of reasons:

   1. You're using the wrong username or password (did you try in an email
   client like Thunderbird?).
   2. Twisted's CRAM-MD5 implementation is buggy.
   3. The SMTP server's CRAM-MD5 implementation is buggy.
   4. Bad description of issue in the SMTP server response - do the SMTP
   server logs say anything additional?

Once you've ruled out options #1 and #4, for options #2 and #3 disabling
CRAM-MD5 might help (though it'd be nice to figure out if there's some way
Twisted could be changed to work with this SMTP server). While slightly
annoying since it involves a bunch of repetition of code already in
Twisted, disabling CRAM-MD5 should be pretty straightforward, and if you're
using SSL or connecting to an SMTP server on localhost isn't really much of
a reduction in security. If you have some indication that CRAM-MD5 is a
problem with this particular server, filing a ticket for that on
http://twistedmatrix.com might be nice.

-- 
Itamar Turner-Trauring, Future Foundries LLC
http://futurefoundries.com/ — Twisted consulting, training and support.
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