cocoaforge

I set up grown to "mailme" on SuperDuper backup completion and/or errors. I tested it via "preview" and by running an SD backup. I received my email notification correctly.

But last night, when my scheduled backup ran, I received no notification, though the console log for Grown shows success:

2006-06-15 01:39:32.228 GrowlHelperApp[313] (MailMe) Successfully sent message "SuperDuper! Copy Succeeded" to address xxxxxxxx@earthlink.net

This this afternoon, I received a "mail delivery failed" email from earthlink regarding "openrelay" issues. The entire text is included. The failed email header looks the same as one which worked.

Any reason known that this should occur at earthlink, or anywhere else for that matter?

Ed

_______ mail delivery failed message ________

This message was created automatically by mail delivery software.

A message that you sent could not be delivered to one or more of its
recipients. This is a permanent error. The following address(es) failed:

xxxxxx@earthlink.net
SMTP error from remote mailer after MAIL FROM:<xxxxxx@earthlink.net> SIZE=1806:
host mxb.earthlink.net [209.86.93.236]: 550 Dynamic IPs/open relays blocked. Contact <openrelay@abuse.earthlink.net>.

------ This is a copy of the message, including all the headers. ------

Return-path: <xxxxxx@earthlink.net>
Received: from [66.245.25.216] (helo=[192.168.0.4])
by elasmtp-kukur.atl.sa.earthlink.net with asmtp (Exim 4.34)
id 1FqnO0-0002qd-1G
for xxxxxx@earthlink.net; Thu, 15 Jun 2006 04:39:32 -0400
Mime-Version: 1.0 (Apple Message framework v750)
To: xxxxxx@earthlink.net
Message-Id: <9213A8F0-A33A-4886-9C98-2B82B5D12145@earthlink.net>
Content-Type: text/plain;
charset=US-ASCII;
delsp=yes;
format=flowed
From: Edward Oates <xxxxxx@earthlink.net>
Subject: SuperDuper! Copy Succeeded
X-Mailer: Apple Mail (2.750)
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit

Copy of xxxxxx to xxxxxx was successful.
-- This message was automatically generated by MailMe, a Growl plug-
in, --
-- in response to a Growl notification --
-- http://growl.info/ --
____________________________

Your isp is blocking port 25 due to viruses/trojans that use that for open relays. Read the error message and you will see that.

Call your isp or email them and ask them to open port 25. There is nothing we can do to help you with this.

I had a feeling it was the war against spam et al. My isp (earthlink) is unlikely to open any more doors for spammers; they did respond to me, here is the text of the likely problem:

* Your e-mail attempted to pass directly from a dynamically
assigned IP range (such as dialup, cable, or DSL) to the
Earthlink network (known as "direct to MX")
without first routing through the appropriate SMTP
server.

It looks from the header as if GROWL is going direct to MX rather than via smtp and other than having a full email setup, I don't see you you can fix that. Oh well, that's show biz.

Ed

I was able to get sbc to open it by filling out some web form. You might call them a couple of times and find a more technical help desk person who might know what to do.

Just to complete the circle: it worked last night, and the headers were different: smtpauth... etc. instead of the "direct" method. It must be an earthlink problem and I've emailed them, but it sure looks like their authorization servers were down for a while just when my backup procedure used Growl to notify me via e-mail.

I've covered the issue as well by using the Growl log option to create a text file on the desktop with Growl's log entries. I'm using email to notify me of backups on my family's computers (ever try to get a 14 year old to do backups?), and if I don't get a notice, at least I can go look at their desktop log file rather than paw through their console logs.

Oh, well, at least it is not a Growl problem.

Ed

I've got "mailme" working (mostly) on my computer; now I've installed Growl (in conjunction with SuperDuper!) on another computer with a completely freshly installed OS 10.4.6 and the developer stuff.

Mailme fails there every time with a console log entry which says that growl could not send the mail.

What service does Growl use to send mail for mailme? I'm not a Unix wheenie, but if you need to, send the info in a Unix a set of terms as necessary; I'll look it up elsewhere.

Ed

I've read the Growl documentation online. I'm also very interested in any possible way to get an email sent to me when certain remote Macs finish their SuperDuper back ups. (Family, friends, clients, etc) I am not on the same network, and they all have different ISP's. However, if Growl allowed authenticated mail sending and a CHOICE OF PORTS we could probably use port 587 and authenticated mail to bypass the isp's SMTP server and use a more friendly smtp server.

I think it's great that Growl & MailMe can send emails using the AppleMail message framework on port 25, but in the rather common case of ISP's blocking port 25, this is going to become less useful all the time.

Also, I just can't trust people not to mess up their AppleMail, so I would really prefer something with less moving parts. As an example I point you all to Julian Mayor's excellent implementation of Pantomime email message framework in his SMARTReporter. It's really well done, and the whole thing is a tiny footprint, like 600k.
http://www.collaboration-world.com/pantomime
http://homepage.mac.com/julianmayer/

So being also able to use an authenticated SMTP server, over any port is the answer. Please add support for that. Thanks for listening.
Best,
Dave Nathanson
Mac Medix

macmedix wrote:So being also able to use an authenticated SMTP server, over any port is the answer.

We'll welcome patches for this, but mailme is not a priority.

I had yet another computer on which MailMe failed, even though I had set up the Apple Mail program and tested it. It worked for a while, and then stopped.

I turns out that my daughter (it is her computer) had subsequently set up Entourage (Microsoft) for mail, etc., and set that as the default mail program. Viola, Growl MailMe stops working (log says that it could not send email).

I tried a bunch of stuff, and then decided to

1. Uninstall Growl
2. Discard its preference files.
2. Reboot
3. Go into Apple Mail and reset the account used to send mail (it's an earthlink smptauth type account).
4. Quit mail, start it up again.
5. Send a test message from Mail: I got the "keychain" message and was asked to re-enter the earthlink account password.
6. Rebooted.
7. Re-installed Growl and reset the mailme stuff.
8. Did the "preview". I got the Keychain message there as well, and

9: Viola! It worked.

I suspect that Growl keeps something around (or mailme, or the underlying Apple mail system) when needs to be reset. Anyway, it now works, so if your MailMe is failing, I suggest steps similar to the above.

A feature suggestion for Growl notifications:

Allow the selection of an Applescript (or other application) to run rather than limit to canned Growl actions. That would basically allow anything to happen on growl notifications.

A second suggestion: allow more than one Growl notification action: for example, an on screen display + mailme.

Ed

Really, the simplest way is to let Growl do the emailing itself, rather than rely on a handful of external parts & duct tape.

As an example I point you all to Julian Mayor's excellent implementation of Pantomime email message framework in his SMARTReporter. It's really well done, and the whole thing is a tiny footprint, like 600k.
http://www.collaboration-world.com/pantomime
http://homepage.mac.com/julianmayer/

I understand that it is fairly easy to integrate, and the Pantomime people have already done most of the heavy lifting. Pantomime is free to use in open source projects.

I believe that this is an easy way to implement reliable email notifications into Growl.

Thanks,
Dave Nathanson