Discourse-doctor Error 503 AUTH command used when not advertised - but email works fine from admin CP

Installation
1

edit: it seems to be an issue only in the discourse-doctor, thus title changed.

hello,

i am trying to figure out how to get the email to work so discourse can send mail to authorize users… I have successfully installed Discourse, but now when I want it to send emails (request new password for example), I discovered that email doesn’t work.

I have spend the last 2 days troubleshooting and I can’t think of anyhting else to try.

when I use discourse doctor I get this error when I try to send mail

503 AUTH command used when not advertised

What does that mean? what do I have to change?

here are the settings from app.yml

DISCOURSE_SMTP_ADDRESS: mail.mydomain.com
DISCOURSE_SMTP_PORT: 587
DISCOURSE_SMTP_USER_NAME: discourse@mydomain.com
DISCOURSE_SMTP_PASSWORD: topsecretpassword
DISCOURSE_SMTP_ENABLE_START_TLS: true
DISCOURSE_SMTP_OPENSSL_VERIFY_MODE: none

I hope anyone can shed some light on it, my eternal gratitude is yours

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2

well it seems I can be eternally grateful for myself…

This seems to be an issue ONLY in the discourse doctor!

because when I out of sheer frustration clicked on “send a testmail” from the Admin CP, lo and behold, to my surprise IT WAS SENT!

So it DOES work, only discourse doctor does it make seem it doesn’t…

and since I was using that to check my settings everytime (and not the sending mail from admin CP), I kept thinking something was wrong!

I don’t know whether this can be fixed somehow but maybe it’s possible to do something in discourse doctor that prevents that error from showing? or adds the message to the user that they should check from the admin CP as well? It will save other folks hopefully the headaches I have had about this ;p

sigh of relief.

thank you

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3

You don’t go to the doctor if you’re not sick. :wink:

We can fix it if we know when the 503 response happens and what it means. I can have a look and see if it should treat that as some kind of warning that should be ignored.

Can you confirm that it still gives you that error on your working configuration? If so, I’ll send you some more commands to try.

Thanks

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4

hi Jay, thank for your reply.
I agree that discourse-doctor is not used for a healthy patient :slight_smile:

OK I tried again as per your request, and still the same error. And this is on a working discourse forum WITH working email (it mails users just fine).

Sending mail to [my email address]
Testing sending to [my email address] using [discourse mail address]:[password]@[mailserver]
======================================== ERROR ========================================
                                    UNEXPECTED ERROR

503 AUTH command used when not advertised


====================================== SOLUTION =======================================
This is not a common error. No recommended solution exists!

Please report the exact error message above to https://meta.discourse.org/
(And a solution, if you find one!)
================================================================================
1 Like
5

Hmm. Thanks. I’ll have a look and see if it can treat that condition as a warning.

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