Unable to send mail by smtp

[saya6k]

Config of add-on

smtp_host: 32b8266a-mailserver
smtp_port: 25
smtp_username: SENDER@MYDOMAIN.tld
smtp_password: PASSWORD
address_from: SENDER@MYDOMAIN.tld

I'm using local mail server addon (https://github.com/erik73/hassio-addons)

I'm able to send mail from Home Assistant smtp integration using config above, but I can't send mail with COPS.

[dunxd]

In your config settings have you selected TLS or SSL? A local mail server would need to support these if they are selected.

If you selected one of these currently you need to edit the YAML of the add-on configuration and remove the following line:

smtp_secure: ssl

If you still have issues please share your addon YAML config - without the username and password fields of course.

[saya6k]

title: COPS
library_folder: books
rsync: false
reader: monocle
smtp_host: 32b8266a-mailserver
smtp_port: 25
smtp_username: SENDER
smtp_password: PASSWORD
address_from: SENDER

[dunxd]

I tested the SMTP functionality to send to Gmail and this also is not working. It used to work, but I stopped using this myself as I am moving away from Amazon Kindle which was the main use case I expected.

Unfortunately the error handling for this feature isn't very verbose - I just see the following output in a browser alert pop-up when I try to send a book to the configured address:

Error:{
  readyState: 0,
  status: 0,
  statusText: error
}

This isn't very helpful for this issue. I'll have to do some more debugging to see if I can figure out what has gone wrong.

[mikespub]

Please check the HA proxy logs for any timeout errors, and maybe adjust the timeout settings there if that's possible...

[dunxd]

The add-on does not currently use Ingress or another proxy method in Home Assistant.

[mikespub]

Without HA, the only way I managed to reproduce the statusText: error message was by killing the php web server while it was still processing the request.

So you might want to check if something stops the container from processing the request if it takes longer than x seconds (HA Supervisor?), and/or if there are errors in the container logs.

And you might want to check the browser developer tools as well to see what triggers that Error message in Javascript. When I tried this with the scenario above, at first the Network Timing showed "Stalled" and then I got a Console message from jquery.min.js with POST http://localhost:8080/index.php/mail net::ERR_EMPTY_RESPONSE - meaning the connection was lost and it got nothing back...

[chickensh1t]

I have the same issue as @dunxd when using SMTP with Gmail. The pop up is immediate, which doesn't look like a timeout issue.

[mikespub]

I have the same issue as @dunxd when using SMTP with Gmail. The pop up is immediate, which doesn't look like a timeout issue.

Hi @chickensh1t is there any way you could try this again with Chrome/Firefox developer tools enabled, to see what the browser is actually POSTing to WHERE, what the response is, and if there are any console messages?

I don't think @dunxd is doing anything special with COPS for the HA Addon that might cause this, but as I can't reproduce it with COPS alone, tracking the issue is a bit ... difficult :-(

[chickensh1t]

Hi @mikespub, thank you for taking an interest.

Here's the relevant output. Both request and response are empty, and the URL doesn't seem right either.

[dunxd]

I see the issue only in the Home Assistant add-on - mikespub-org version works fine.

In HA COPS when I try to send a book I get the same error in the JavaScript alert box from the screenshot posted by @chickensh1t.

The developer tools Network tab mentions the request going to http://mail/

Specific errors are

jquery.min.js?v=3.7.2:2 [Violation] 'error' handler took 13747ms
jquery.min.js?v=3.7.2:2  POST http://mail/ net::ERR_NAME_NOT_RESOLVED

[dunxd]

I made a test PHP script that sends a test message via PHPMailer and then ran it manually from within the HA add-on docker container. It successfully sent the test message. So I am now confident the issue is not related to the config of the docker container.

When you click the email button on the book detail page, it runs the javascript function fromSendToMailAddress() from util.js where the URL is set by:

var url = currentData.baseurl + "/mail";

That seems to be the line where it is then calling http://mail which cannot be resolved. Using the console I can see that currentData.baseurl is set to / , hence url evaluates to //mail which I guess is handled by ajax as http://mail.

@mikespub Could this have something to do with resolver.php? Could that be rewriting the URL sent to ajax in a way we don't want that would only affect COPS if served through the PHP Built in server?

Aside

FYI here's the script for testing PHPMailer:

<?php

// 1. Load the COPS environment (Change path if your files are elsewhere)
require_once 'vendor/autoload.php';

use PHPMailer\PHPMailer\PHPMailer;
use PHPMailer\PHPMailer\SMTP;
use PHPMailer\PHPMailer\Exception;

// 2. Initialize PHPMailer with Verbose Debugging
$mail = new PHPMailer(true);
try {
    // --- DEBUG SETTINGS ---
    $mail->SMTPDebug = 3; // Full client & server log
    $mail->Debugoutput = 'echo';

    // --- SMTP CONFIG (Match your config/local.php) ---
    $mail->isSMTP();
    $mail->Host       = 'smtp.gmail.com';
    $mail->SMTPAuth   = true;
    $mail->Username   = 'myemail@gmail.com';
    $mail->Password   = 'mypassword'; // 16-character code
    $mail->SMTPSecure = PHPMailer::ENCRYPTION_STARTTLS;
    $mail->Port       = 587;

    // --- TEST CONTENT ---
    $mail->setFrom('myemail@gmail.com', 'COPS Test');
    $mail->addAddress('myemail@gmail.com');
    $mail->Subject = 'Manual PHPMailer Test';
    $mail->Body    = 'If you see this, PHP Sockets and OpenSSL are working.';

    $mail->send();
    echo "\n[SUCCESS] Message has been sent!\n";

} catch (Exception $e) {
    echo "\n[ERROR] Message could not be sent. Mailer Error: {$mail->ErrorInfo}\n";
}

[dunxd]

Ok - maybe I spoke to soon - when I run the mikespub-org version using php -S 0:8000 router.php the mailer works fine. currentData.baseurl is being evaluated as /index.php in the console in standard COPS.

While using HA COPS if I use the console to force currentData.baseurl = '/index.php' instead of just '/'the mail sends successfully.

I can't figure out why this would be different for pages in HA COPS and standard COPS, but that must be the root of the problem.

Where is currentData.baseurl set at the Javascript level?