Problem sending emails with M1XEP

N

newalarm

Active Member
Alright, have been at this for a week now, and last night spent 3 hours talking to utterly incompetent people at Comcast, being transferred around to wrong departments, and being hung up on repeatedly; I don't know how they stay in business...

1. I can connect via wifi or ethernet fine to the M1XEP. Occasionally, it disconnects me, but usually connection stays good for about hour or so. Sometimes, it takes a few tries to reconnect but then it is good. I assume this is normal.

2. I have set up an email account in the M1XEP using an GMX account, following Elk's instructions on their website for SMTP accounts. I have a 'FROM' email in the space. (I can access the account via the web and send and receive normally.) I set up one email (number 1) message to myself and with a short message. I have NOT been able to send any emails through the M1G when i click on the test button.

3. I set up a rule to send out email every 5 minutes. Again, no message sent/received.

4. on TCP/IP settings, i am set up as DHCP, and auto DNS. 'Enable Non-secure port' is not checked. 'Secure Port' is set to default.

5. I have a mode/router/telephone device from Comcast. I am getting internet and phone through this device. I have not yet accessed the set up on this device.

I think the problem lies in my ports. Do I need to go into my Comcast mode/router/telephone device to make some changes?

I tried to explain this to Comcast techs, but they seem to know less than I do. They wanted to send a tech to meet my tech (they did not seem to understand that I was doing the install and there was not alarm company even though I explained it to them 5 times), and charge me for the pleasure... I know it is not that complicated...

Anyone?
 
Go to a PC and if you can telnet smtp.gmx.com 25 and you get a prompt back then your network is fine. Typically for outbound connections nothing needs to be done to a router config and while Comcast may block port 25 normally ISPs don't. So if the test above fails then you can call and ask and/or try the alternate port 465.

The ELK does not support SSL encryption, so you usually have to use port 25 unencrypted (or apparently 465 for GMX) and your username and password and all of your email will be sent in the clear across the internet. If that bothers you then if you search here on stunnel you will see examples of how to relay encypted email through a PC on your network for the Elk. Also the Elk does not seem to support many of the other secure SMTP flavors so it may just be an incompatibility between the Elk and the service you are using.
 
I am able to telnet and Ping the address. When i hit send test, I don't receive anything. i tried all the different ports and none work. This is ridiculously difficult...
 
If i can telnet or ping, isn't the port open?

Looking at router settings:

On low security firewall, blocking: ids enabled and ident (port 113), i can ping and telnet to the gmx used ports.

On high security firewall, Allows: email (TCP port 25, 465, 587....) and Blocked: all unrelated WAN and LAN traffic include VpN and enabled IDS. But I can't ping...

So I am leaving on low security.

I tried messing with 'port triggering' and added port 25 and 587 (trigger and target ports) and making the active, but no change.

I just spoke to a tech who said that my internet provider does not block any ports.

Just to be clear, the Elk is using the GMX account to send emails out to whatever email you set up on the XEPs email tab? So when you hit test, while in RP, it should send out a test email to whatever email you have in the 'email message 1' line.

There are two things that confuse me... http://m1dealer.elkp...=view&FAQ_id=70 talks about being disconnected from RP to send test. Not sure how you do that. I tried his other idea of creating a rule, but that does not work either.

Second, http://cocoontech.co...g-on-an-m1gold/ talks about setting up his email account to forward all email to his regular account (I don't think GMX allows this), but I did not see reasoning behind this. Seems like an extra step and possible weak point.

Thanks.
 
Ping no, telnet yes. If you can telnet to the port then it is not your ISP and it is not your router. Yes the Elk will send the email line 1 using the settings. The from address should be the email address of your GMX account, a lot of email providers check the from address to prevent SMTP relaying.

I just setup a test account and it worked for me with the following settings:
Server URL/IP: smtp.gmx.com
From: <username>@gmx.com
Port: 25
Username: <username>@gmx.com
Password: <password>
 
Ok, my bad, I forgot to actually send my settings to the M1XEP, so I was still using my old account. GMX doesn't work, it looks like it isn't compatible with the Elk. I sent a test email and took a sniffer trace, the Elk reset the connection after receiving the ESMTP header message. It doesn't even try to authenticate.

The Elk is very flaky about SMTP and doesn't support a lot of common server implementations, it looks like GMX is one of them.... Sorry. You'll have to find another service provider... I am using my ISP account, some others have had success with GMAIL using STunnel to encrypt. You can search here and maybe find some other service provider's mentioned.


What I see is:

Elk <-------------> GMX Server
SYN--->
SYNACK<---
ACK--->
EHLO <message> <----
RST--->
 
hmmm. Strange. Elk recommended GMX. Maybe things changed with GMX. I guess I will try another email provider. Any recommendations?
 
I have seen this before, some SMTP clients don't like the proactive message from the server. Or alternatively it could be something in the message it doesn't like (like the {} braces). They really should ignore the message completely, some implementations try to parse it. You could contact Elk again and see what they say....

ESMTP (extended SMTP) is frankly a mess, it is a hodge podge of various RFC's and loose implementation guidelines. Unfortunately no one really runs plain old vanilla SMTP servers anymore because it is so insecure, but it was easy to deal with on the client side.

I don't have any recommendations other than what I said above, maybe someone else will chime in with a public email provider they are using.
 
I have been successfully using a free unencrypted E-mail account setup with lavabit.com to communicate with my Elk M1XEP. I also have setup a rule within the Elk system to send an E-mail every 24 hours which I use as a 'heartbeat' to tell me my Elk system is still connected to the internet. I use this lavabit account ONLY for the Elk communications and also setup the lavabit account to auto-forward all Elk E-mail to my personal E-mail account. My 24 hour heartbeat E-mail is enough to keep my lavabit account active too..

I have to assume my ISP(TDS Telecom) required authentication, and I couldn't use my TDS E-mail account since they used Gmail, and Gmail is encrypted. I tried port 25, but it didn't work. I ended up using Port 587 at a Server IP Address for lavabit as 72.249.41.52 I also had issues with my ISP DNS Server and had to use specific IP addresses in order to get my E-mail lavabit E-mail to work properly.

Setting up the XEP was a royal PITA, but I haven't had any further issues since setting up the lavabit email.(knock on wood)

BTW, I never had any success trying to use the "Test" button on the Email tab of the M1XEP setup window.

Sorry for the 'long-winded' answer, but this seems to work for me.. Hope this helps
 
Elkaholic said:
I have been successfully using a free unencrypted E-mail account setup with lavabit.com to communicate with my Elk M1XEP. I also have setup a rule within the Elk system to send an E-mail every 24 hours which I use as a 'heartbeat' to tell me my Elk system is still connected to the internet. I use this lavabit account ONLY for the Elk communications and also setup the lavabit account to auto-forward all Elk E-mail to my personal E-mail account. My 24 hour heartbeat E-mail is enough to keep my lavabit account active too..

I have to assume my ISP(TDS Telecom) required authentication, and I couldn't use my TDS E-mail account since they used Gmail, and Gmail is encrypted. I tried port 25, but it didn't work. I ended up using Port 587 at a Server IP Address for lavabit as 72.249.41.52 I also had issues with my ISP DNS Server and had to use specific IP addresses in order to get my E-mail lavabit E-mail to work properly.

Setting up the XEP was a royal PITA, but I haven't had any further issues since setting up the lavabit email.(knock on wood)

BTW, I never had any success trying to use the "Test" button on the Email tab of the M1XEP setup window.

Sorry for the 'long-winded' answer, but this seems to work for me.. Hope this helps
Click to expand...

Same here. I used the procedure linked to earlier in this thread and setup Lavabit as the provider.

While I dont have a test email every 24 hours, I do have my system automatically arm through rules, and I have rules for when the system is armed and disarmed to send the appropriate email. Since I set it all up, I havent missed an email yet.
 
Elkaholic.... ThankyouThankyouThankyou!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I finally got it to work with your settings. I did use the test button and it worked. Providing the actual IP address and using the 587 port is what did it.

Wow. talk bout finicky, PITA software/hardware to say the least. I took me an entire week to get this thing to work... now I need to figure out the rest.

I never understood the thing about having the lavabit account forward to another email; what is that all about?
 
Port 25 works too. I guess it was the Url/IP address that was holding it up. XEP must not like URLs.

Just to help others... I got to the DOS prompt (in vista) and typed:

ping lavabit.com

and the computer will test the connection, give you the IP and tell you if information is getting through.

Then I telneted out to see if port was working:

telnet lavabit.com 587

and the screen clears if you are able to get into the lavabit computer.
 
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