#782 smtp or socket issue causes error 400 in Windows XP Pro

[Robert Joy]

I thought I had submitted this back in 2005 but I do
not see it in the bug database so I am sumbitting
again.

I am using tcllib mime and smtp to send email from a
tcl tool. Unfortunately, it seems that a socket error
is being thrown if the body size gets beyond around
10KB. I'm unsure if it's a socket issue or a tcllib
issue. It seems to be consistent as I have tried this
with 3 different body texts. I already sumbitted this
to ActiveState and they referred me over here. Please
see the submission on ActiveStates bug system. The
bug ID is 42067. I have upload several files there. I
would really appreciate it if you guys could take a
look at this.

Thanks,
Robert Joy

[Pat Thoyts]

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The AS bug: http://bugs.activestate.com/show_bug.cgi?id=42067

[Pat Thoyts]

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I believe this is actually a problem on your server. The
script provided works fine (although you should add the
following lines to get the To and From headers added)
set from "\"$fullname\" <$emailaddr>"
mime::setheader $token From $from
mime::setheader $token To $to

I have tried this using the files you attached to the
ActiveState bug on a Microsoft SMTP server and on Postfix
(on Linux) and both worked ok. If you want to test this
yourself locally I suggest you add -debug 1 to the options
for smtp::sendmessage. This gets it to record the SMTP
conversation to stderr.
You might also try the sample smtp server that is part of
tcllib itself. If you start the example server (wish
tcllib\examples\smptd\tk_smtpd) and set the port number to
25 you can ue your script and send mail to localhost as the
server. This way you can see both sides of the conversation.
It's possible that your server is using the SIZE extension
and limiting SIZE to something very small.

I am going to close this as works for me - but reopen if you
have more information to add.

[Robert Joy]

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Ok, seems I left out something. I am sending the email
through an external email server owned by a reputable
hosting company. I believe this may effect the outcome. So
I am re-opening this report and adding some new info. I
have attached a file that contains the smtp dump after
turning on the -debug flag, a code snippet used to send
the message and the tcl result error. Also, the mail gets
sent but it's truncated to something less than 10KB.

Also, the machine that is running my program is the same
machine that I use for my personal email client
(Thunderbird). It works just fine for sending large email
bodies.

Please let me know what you think. You might also try
sending a message to an external server and see what you
get. Please make sure to use a large file and ensure that
received file is approximately the same size. My test file
was 52KB.

Thanks Patt

[Robert Joy]

New error info

[Robert Joy]

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Oh, one more thing, the path you gave to the example smtp
server does not exist on my install of ActiveTcl 8.4.11.2

[Pat Thoyts]

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Using information contained in your attachment I have sent
myself the mime.tcl file (108K) using your script on a
Windows XP machine and sending via your server. In all cases
I have got the full file. I'll separately mail you some
extra bits.

[Nobody/Anonymous]

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I get the same error when sending mail attatchments bigger
than 6-7 kb. The smtp package stops the base64 encoded
part, sends a newline and a dot, then RSET and QUIT. (no
ending boundry)

The error message is "400: error writing "sock244": invalid
argument"

Here, a ethereal dump of the end of the conversation with
mail server:
<dump>
dWJ0eXBlL1RydWVUeXBlPj4KZW5kb2JqCjI1IDAgb2JqCjw8L1R5cGUvRW5j
b2RpbmcvQmFzZUVu
Y29kaW5nL1dpbkFuc2lFbmNvZGluZy9EaWZmZXJlbmNlc1sKMS9qL
.
RSET
QUIT
250 198182198 mailfe02 Message accepted for delivery
250 SMTP state reset
221 mailfe02.swip.net SMTP closing connection
</dump>
Looks like smtp tries to send rest of the data, but
allready has closed the connection.
Rgds.
Jesper

[Nobody/Anonymous]

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In addition to my previously post.
Just tested the setup thru sockspy, and the error didnt
occur. This could look like some socket issue in the smtp
package code.

Rgds
Jesper

[Robert Joy]

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This issue was resolved for me by Pat Thoyts. It turned
out to be an problem with the TCLs standard socket
implementation. Here's the solution:

One last thing I thought of is there is an alternative
socket implementation for Tcl on windows - the iocpsock
extension provides a socket2 command. It was written as a
performance enhanced socket layer and uses the winsock
APIs rather than the BSD socket APIs. There is a slight
chance this might produce a different result for you. You
would use it by doing:

package require Iocpsock
interp alias {} socket {} socket2

[Robert Joy]

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This issue was not resolved. It appeared that it was
working because I move from the standard socket to the
iocpsock package which allowed a larger portion of the
email to be sent before something went wrong.

I did some more testing and here's what I discovered:

I went into the the smtp package and disabled the trf
package call. This allowed me to send large emails and
attachments but I was not happy with this solution so I
poked around some more and found that the tls package was
not installed on my system. I assumed everything needed
was there since I'm using ActiveTcl from ActiveState.
Those guys are usually pretty good about including
everything but I've since been informed that the package
was excluded from ActiveTcl due to export restrictions on
the crypt stuff.

Second, if I send an email WITH "-usetls true" the mail
sends just fine (this is how Pat Thoyts was sending his
emails). However, when I send emails with "-usetls false"
it fails miserably and I get the dreaded iocpsock/sock
error!

I'd like to see if you can send a large email soemthing in
the neighborhood of 1MB with the -usetls set to false.
There's obviously still something wrong with the way the
smtp package is handling the trf stuff.

[Mark Garvey]

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FWIW, this bug has just appeared after an upgrade to tcllib-1.9
tcllib-1.8 was/is working fine so I'll stick with it for the moment.
System Win XP PRO SP2, iocpsock does not improve the situation. (tcl 8.4.13)
Code is as follows:

set token [mime::initialize -canonical text/plain -string $body]
catch {smtp::sendmessage $token \
-recipients $recipient\
-header [list From $from]\
-header [list To $recipient]\
-header [list Subject $subject]\
-servers $email_server -usetls 0} error
mime::finalize $token