Pear error Connection refused

[msn]

Hello,

I made an update to the stable 1.9 release of CiviCRM and within this update I noticed that I could not mail from CiviCRM. The 'old' site ( 1.8 ) and a test setup in 1.9dev had both a working email feature in contacts and in the mass mail newsletter function.

I had a problem in the update proces: see http://issues.civicrm.org/jira/browse/CRM-2355

I downgraded my update back to the old (working) situation (backups from database and scripts) then I still could not mail. That's why I thought it is a server problem and informed my provider.

I spend a few hours testing. I have the smtp mailbox in outlook: incoming and outgoing mail is working. I made a test from the base crm (Drupal) with civimail@hanze-events.cmseasy.nl. This worked.

The provider response: smtp is ok.

A made a new clean civicrm setup, The PEAR error is also in a clean setup. It is a litle bit strange for me because the mail feature did work perfect the last 3 months in 1.8 and 1.9 dev versions

When I make a newsletter (CiviMail) and send the test mail there is no error,  when I send the newsletter there is also no error. The proces of sending the newsletter is working: planned, start and complete timings (civimail cron) are conform cron timings. But nothing is send

When I want to send a mail from a contact I get the errors:

Code: [Select]

Error Details:
Array
(
    [callback] => Array
        (
            [0] => CRM_Core_Error
            [1] => handle
        )

    [code] => 111
    [message] => Connection refused
    [mode] => 16
    [debug_info] =>
    [type] => PEAR_Error
    [user_info] =>
    [to_string] => [pear_error: message="Connection refused" code=111 mode=callback callback=CRM_Core_Error::handle prefix="" info=""]
)


Error Details:
Array
(
    [callback] => Array
        (
            [0] => CRM_Core_Error
            [1] => handle
        )

    [code] =>
    [message] => not connected
    [mode] => 16
    [debug_info] =>
    [type] => PEAR_Error
    [user_info] =>
    [to_string] => [pear_error: message="not connected" code=0 mode=callback callback=CRM_Core_Error::handle prefix="" info=""]
My tests and the error messages points this problem to PEAR.
Thank you for your feedback

[/code][/code]

[msn]

I don't know why, but setting up SMTP server in SMTP config to 'localhost' started the mail again and it looks like that it solved this issue. How is it possible that it worked for a long time with a 'mail.website.org' setup... confusing. It is a simple solution, cost a lot of reading on this forum, testing and time.