More Elk E-mail issues... Please help.

[SIMKO]

I am at a loss for words. My entire ELK install with the exception of email notifications has gone GREAT... everything working as it should (keypads enrolled without a hitch, wireless zones enroll perfectly, programming through RP works great, etc).

I am still trying to get the panel to email me once a day at 7:00am and any time an alarm goes off.

For testing, I made a rule to email me every few mintues so that I could see if it works while RP is disconnected. Well, I originally had it set to email every two minutes and that was almost disaster because everytime it tried to send an email, it would disconnect RP. I could just barely get connected and it would kick me back off. It wasn't until I timed it just right that I was able to connect and change the rule to every 5 minutes. Disaster averted.

I have exhausted every known permutation of settings on the TCP/IP and EMAIL tab in the M1XEP.

I have also read every post on cocoontech that has the word M1XEP, email, lavabit or GMX.

I decided to stop the insanity of entering information into the M1XEP and rebooting dozens of times and see if I could telnet to the mail server from the command prompt.

My mail account is a lavabit account so I attempted to telnet to the Lavabit mail server (72.249.41.52 25). I tried telnetting to the server on ports 25,587, 2525, and 3535. All of them were unable to connect.

Is there some setting I should be looking for in my router or could it be that my ISP is really blocking all of those ports?

Are there any programs that can tell me if an outbound port is definately open or blocked.

When I did the test, I had the router firewall turned off, windows firewall turned off, and the AVG antivirus disabled.

Any help would be very appreciated. There has to be a way to make this work. I wish ELK would come up with a fix for this... it's definately a black-eye on an otherwise great product.

 

[michelkenny]

ISPs often block outgoing mail traffic unless it is to their servers, in order to combat you running your own mail server to send out spam. Because you cannot telnet to port 25 of your lavabit server, this is almost certainly what is happening. The only workaround is going to be using your ISP's mail server. I've had to do this on my Elk as this is what my ISP does.

 

[wuench]

Your ISP should be able to tell you what ports they block. Call them. If you aren't happy with the answers consider a new ISP.

 

[SIMKO]

Your ISP should be able to tell you what ports they block. Call them. If you aren't happy with the answers consider a new ISP.

I called up my ISP. They said that the only port that they block is 25. All other ones are open. They are not sure why I wouldn't be able to use lavabit as an outgoing mail server on 587.

I wish I had a choice of a different ISP. I live in a pretty remote area and I'm just on the fringe of DSL. If it wasn't for DSL, I'd have to get internet from a satellite dish :blink:

 

[wolfdown]

Setup a local mail server on your network, and see if you can send email to that. If it works, then you know its not the Elk.

 

[SIMKO]

I'm not saying the ELK is at fault. I'm 99% sure it's operator error or something to do with my ISP.

A quick search will show that I'm in good company with people that have had trouble getting it to work or have given up completely and bought a controller to do their emails. I feel that if the ELK has the option available, then I should be able to use it (albeit how limited the email function is).

The problem isn't that it doesn't work... the problem is it's limitations making it much more difficult to install than it needs to be. I'll be the first to admit that I'm not a computer guru, but I know much more than your average Joe, and definitely more than I need to be dangerous.

Thanks everyone for the help so far. I don't mean to sound sarcastic, but this is really starting to get to me.

 

[treo650]

Hmm. Your satellite isp provider may be like the mobile cell networks.

I've tried smtp on sprint cell network and it does not work.

Look into stunnel. That should be able to do what you want.

And if you do find out step by step on tomato or dd-wrt router, please post it.

I'm stuck trying to find a how to on tomato router to stunnel gmail

 

[SIMKO]

I finally got it working and as I stated, it was operator error. I ended up setting up my ISP supplied email (thanks Kazibole) and using that for my ELK notifications. No matter what I did I could not get the Lavabit or the GMX email accounts to work.

When I talked to the online chat tech support they told me that there was no non-SSL email supported, but when I called up they told me that I could use the outgoing mail server on port 25 and it would be non-SSL.

I realize I started to get a little frazzled towards the end there, and I want to thank everyone for the help.

I'm looking forward to doing some more programming, setting up more zones, and doing the lighting install rather than fighting with the email function.