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When I send a bulk mail test message I get the following:
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Sorry. A non-recoverable error has occurred.

Failed to add recipient: myemail@yahoo.com [SMTP: Invalid response code received from SMTP server while sending email. This is often caused by a misconfiguration in Outbound Email settings. Please verify the settings at Administer CiviCRM >> Global Settings >> Outbound Email (SMTP). (code: 550, response: Verification failed for No Such User Here" Sender verify failed)]

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The outgoing email configuration page says that it is happy and test messages arrive promptly. I can send emails to merge mail recipients and those emails arrive promptly. The new Civi cron procedure

The installation runs Drupal 7.14 and CiviCRM 4.1.2 on Bluehost. Updates from 7.09 and 4.0.5 went by the book with no errors.

This has to be a configuration error somewhere. Help?

Jim

Did this work properly when you were on 4.0.5? Wasn't clear if you were saying yes.

Second, what happens when you send a bulk mail test message to a group instead of an individual address?

Also, have you tried it using sendmail or something other than smtp in the outbound settings?

Emily,

This has never worked on this installation as well as another installation on Bluehost. Both fail with the exact same error. I upgraded both Drupal and Civi to the latest releases to see if that cured the problem - it did not. There were no errors in the upgrade procedures. I just scheduled a test bulk email without doing a test message first to see what happens, but I expect it to fail.

I tried using mail() with the same failure with the same error message. I cannot get sendmail to work because it requires an argument and I have no idea what that should be. I tried yelling at it and called it names to no avail.

Bluehost says they cannot enable wildcard addresses.

The thread you referenced does sound like the same problem and I think this may be a bug in the Civi where it is trying to authenticate to SMTP using the VERP address rather than the original sender address. That is not likely to work on any hosting service. I could set up a Gmail account to collect bounce-backs if that is what works, but I'll never be able to send without authenticating.

Thanks,
Jim

lobo,

I need more information about how CiviMail works. What is in the header of sent messages? Where is the VERP address? What is in the from address? I need to be able to explain to a support tech who has never heard of Civi why he should enable wildcard addresses and why this will not kill his server. Where is this stuff documented? The book is just basic setup info. Where's the beef?

It might be possible for me to use an Exchange server as a relay point (with authentication, of course). How would I enable wildcards on Exchange? I've administered Exchange for some time but have never heard of wildcard addresses. Using Exchange is a long shot, the information about CiviMail will be more useful to me and doubtless many more people as well.

Jim

Don,

Using the thread on how to disable VERP, I was able to configure a test Gmail account for bouncebacks. The VERP/bounceback processing was the cause of the fatal error. This should be noted in the set up information ASAP. There is nothing in the setup information about VERP, how to set up a bounceback account, or how this can cause a fatal error. I have yet to test the actual bounceback processing so I have grave doubts that I have things configured properly in <mydomain.com>/civicrm/admin/mailSettings (Menu navigation: Administer|CiviMail|Mail Accounts but this is vastly better than the hard stop caused by the fatal error.

Longer term, this error should be trapped so a helpful error message can be displayed pointing the user to the actual cause of the problem. The fatal error message (see first post) is a wild goose chase as the SMTP settings were always correct.

Jim

Don,

Thanks for the pointers you have provided - I'm sure I will be back for more. I would love to add to the documentation if I had the time. I'm a volunteer trying to set up Drupal/CiviCRM sites for two all-volunteer organizations and I will soon start on a third. I could drop those tasks and work on the documentation, but that would not be fair to the organizations to which I am already committed. That's why I at least try to point out bugs/errors and provide as much information as I can to volunteers like you who can shepherd it thru to other volunteers who do have the time and skills to write the documentation. Such writers are the unsung heroes of open source software.

As to debugging and fixing the code, I'm not a PHP programmer. In days of yore I have been a programmer in several languages on many platforms. I'm having sufficient fun just climbing the learning curve of CiviCRM and Drupal. Learning yet another language is just not in the cards.

Jim