Solved! Setting Up Roaming SMTP Service

LXer Feature: 15-Apr-06 Many ISPs block smtp connections from outside their networks, which is great for stopping spam, but it also makes things a little difficult for laptop users who need to send e-mail from another network. Initially, Don Parris found some workarounds, such as setting up his e-mail client to use Google's smtp server, but had difficulty getting the correct settings for Evolution.

The Problem

I recently decked out my laptop with a wireless NIC, I started using it more often than before, and in more places. I discovered that I could access my pop accounts from anywhere, but not send out e-mail at all. I looked for information about roaming smtp access with my ISP, RoadRunner. I even saw information about using smtp authentication in other areas, including the Duke University area, which is not too far from Charlotte. Surely, I figured, they offered smtp authentication for Bank Town, USA. Yeah right. So, what were my options?

The Pitfalls: SMTP Authentication or Web Mail

I posted a query to the Charlotte Linux User Group, figuring someone might know about RoadRunner's smtp authentication capabilities. Oddly, no one did, but one of the guys did query their smtp server for me, and posted the results back to the list - RoadRunner (at least in our area) does not provide smtp authentication. One suggested GMail, others suggested using web mail.

I have ruled out web mail, as I had numerous problems with RoadRunner's web mail service timing out - even though I had only been logged in for a minute or two. In fact, that was one reason I was trying to use my normal e-mail client. Using web mail on the road is great if your client supports deleting messages after a certain number of days. However, Evolution doesn't offer that option. Either you leave messages on the server, and delete them manually from the web mail service, or you delete them, and lose your ability to use "Reply-To" when you're using web mail. For me, neither of these options is at all ideal.

I could use another e-mail client. Frankly, Thunderbird is easy to use, but I can't stand the address book. It is woefully underfeatured, compared to Evolution and Kontact. Kontact has a pop filter feature that supposedly allows one to delete messages from the server. I could not get this to work properly under SUSE Linux 10.0. I haven't traced that issue out yet, either. The other wrench in that pipe, though, is that I am running Ubuntu and Evolution on my laptop. I could probably use Sylpheed, which is another client I really like. However, Evolution is a PIM, which is what I prefer to use for scheduling and communication. If Sylpheed tied into Evolution well, that would be ideal. Otherwise, I have to run two separate programs for related tasks.

The Solution: Setting Up Evolution For GMail

With RoadRunner offering sorry web mail service, and Evolution not allowing me to automatically delete messages after they had aged a bit, I decided to setup Evolution to use Google's SMTP service. Oddly, no one on the CharLUG list seemed to know the correct settings to use for Evolution. So I went back to Google for another search. I had, in fact, found information on setting up Thunderbird, but the information wasn't helpful for Evolution. For example, the Thunderbird information shows a check box for using TLS, but Evolution has no such option that I can see. I needed something specific to Evolution, as I didn't seem to be able to get the correct authentication method.

After adding evolution to my list of search terms (gmail, smtp, configuration, evolution), I found a post over at Linux Forums giving me exactly what I needed. The Complete Guide to Using Gmail with Thunderbird, Mozilla Mail, Evolution, and Kmail is exactly what any confused or new user needs. This guide is really cool, as I didn't have to sift through several forum posts to find the necessary information. I went right to it.

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