isolate hang in SMTP delivery

[Daan van Rossum]

Dear mutt devs,

I occasionally experience a perpetual hang in mutt when sending email using SMTP over an unstable connection (4G).

How can I best debug and isolate the cause of the issue? Or would you recommend avoiding mutt's built-in SMTP functionality?

I use mutt 1.9.4.

Thanks, Daan

[Kevin J. McCarthy]

Post by Daan van Rossum
I occasionally experience a perpetual hang in mutt when sending email
using SMTP over an unstable connection (4G).
How can I best debug and isolate the cause of the issue? Or would you
recommend avoiding mutt's built-in SMTP functionality?

Mutt's implementation is pretty basic. I personally would recommend
using a more robust tool if the connection is unstable (e.g. msmtp, or
even a built-in MTA).

[Daan van Rossum]

Post by Kevin J. McCarthy

Post by Daan van Rossum
I occasionally experience a perpetual hang in mutt when sending email
using SMTP over an unstable connection (4G).
How can I best debug and isolate the cause of the issue? Or would you
recommend avoiding mutt's built-in SMTP functionality?

Mutt's implementation is pretty basic. I personally would recommend
using a more robust tool if the connection is unstable (e.g. msmtp, or
even a built-in MTA).

A timeout to the SMTP call would solve the hang issue. The user can then chose to postpone or resend after the timeout returns a send error.