SMTP servers requiring encryption of authentication not useable from VMS Mail

[madsweeney]

--- Observation ---
It is getting more and more difficult these days to send email from OpenVMS. TCP/IP Services V5.7 sends mail by connecting to a distant server, determined from the MX record for the destination domain, on port 25. It appears that the service cannot send mail through an SMTP server that requires either encryption or authentication. If I am wrong about any of that, please correct me.

How does TCP/IP Services V6.0 address those issues?
---

TCP/IP V6.0 does not include features to support sending mail through SMTP servers requiring authentication and encryption. Please reply to this topic if your application or product requires extending OpenVMS to support sending mail through SMTP servers requiring authentication and encryption.

[arne_v]

I am not surprised.

But it does not work that way. They can't say "we want to connect to a SMTP server using all latest and greatest protocols" and "we don't want to install anything new on the system". New functionality requires new software.

If they don't like Python but can live with Java, then JavaMail library can also do it.

I would expect Perl to also be able to do it - I am just totally clueless about Perl.

If one searched Github then I would expect to find some C libraries as well if one prefer native code.

Obviously it will be a lot easier the day callable mail and MAIL support extsmtp%"..." connecting to an external SMTP server using a system wide (S:RWED,O:RWED,G,W) protected config file.

But VSI got a long list of VMS enhancements to work through. It may take time to get to this. And that is assuming they see the need, which I have no idea if is the case.

And I suspect that the new solution would be VMS 9.3 or later only - no backport to VMS 8.4-2Lx Alpha or VMS 8.4-2Lx Itanium.

[craigberry]

sendEmail is a Perl program that can send mail using TLS, assuming the additional modules to make that work have been installed. I've used it successfully on VMS:

https://github.com/zehm/sendEmail

So, yes, there are workarounds and add-ons that can get the job done. But having modern mail capabilities out of the box would be a big help for the many scenarios where building a custom solution is either inconvenient or impossible.

[cct]

Maybe just an SMTP client?

I use msmtp on my linux machines - only interested in sending mail

Chris

[arne_v]

Maybe just an SMTP client?

I use msmtp on my linux machines - only interested in sending mail

https://github.com/marlam/msmtp

says:

msmtp runs on a wide variety of platforms. It needs little more than an ANSI C
compiler and Berkeley-style sockets. It does not require any additional libraries,
but it can use the following to enhance its feature set:
- GnuTLS. The GnuTLS library provides TLS support.
Alternatively, libtls from the LibreSSL project can be used.
- GNU SASL. Using the GNU SASL library adds support for some additional
authentication methods, including SCRAM-* and GSSAPI.
- GNU libidn2. On modern Linux systems with recent glibc and GnuTLS
libraries, msmtp has automatic support for Internationalized Domain Names
(IDN). On other systems, IDN support is available via libidn2.

VMS got ANSI C and BSD sockets.

But to get TLS we would need GnuTLS. I wonder if GnuTLS has been ported to VMS.

[goathunter]

Problem there is I don't believe they have anything for X86 VMS

I don't have a timeframe yet, but we do plan to release both PMDF and PMAS (our anti-spam package) for OpenVMS X86_64. I have the proxy version of PMAS already running in-house on X86_64.

Hunter