Please help!
I can't send email from TheBAT for months!

I've been having the same problem for months as well. It has nothing to do with my authentication settings or other configuration details which have remained the same for years. Just to make sure, I used Sylpheed and Thunderbird to check the settings and both worked fine. I even telnetted (SSL) into the smtp server to send mail with the same Userid and Password with no problem. It is definitely some incompatibility of The Bat with smtp.tom.com.

Would the developers please investigate?

Thanks.

No, I did not change the version of TB when this problem appeared. If I recall correctly, I was either using 3.99 or the previous version. The problem just started appearing one day. I think that tom.com made some adjustments to their SMTP authentication protocol somehow and made it incompatible to TB. However that's no excuse as TB seems to be the only client affected. Most of the popular email clients like Outlook, Thunderbird, Eudora, Sylpheed, Mutt (yes, I've tested them) do not have any problems sending mail. POP remains ok with TB though, it's just SMTP.

Here's what my TB log says from an attempt to send mail just a few minutes ago:

8/18/2007, 08:42:52: SEND  - sending mail messages - 1 messages in queue
8/18/2007, 08:42:53: SEND  - connected to SMTP server
8/18/2007, 08:42:53: SEND  - authenticating (plain)...
8/18/2007, 08:43:03: SEND  - Server reports error. The response is: CoremailSys:Error: authentication failed
8/18/2007, 08:43:03: SEND  - authenticating (login)...
8/18/2007, 08:43:03: SEND  - Server reports error. The response is:
8/18/2007, 08:43:03: SEND  - WARNING: there were no compatible authentication mechanisms detected
8/18/2007, 08:43:03: SEND  - sending message to xxx@gmail.com
!8/18/2007, 08:43:03: FETCH - Connection to host broken (last commands sent were: "EHLO com76", "MAIL FROM:<xxx@tom.com>")
!8/18/2007, 08:43:03: FETCH - Connection to host broken (last commands sent were: "EHLO com76", "MAIL FROM:<xxx@tom.com>")
8/18/2007, 08:43:03: SEND  - connection finished - 0 messages sent
8/18/2007, 08:43:03: SEND  - Some messages were not sent - check the log for details

I really hope this gets resolved.

well, i also have this problem.
I have tried Dreammail and Sylpheed, they all works well with the SMTP.
It seems that the authenticating process have some problem.

I strongly suggest the developer team to use Sylpheed Libs to recode the source.

I've tried your settings and logged the communication with the server:

[16:51:58] C: Connected to smtp.tom.com, port 25
[16:51:59] S: 220 bjapp12.tom.com KBAS is ready
[16:51:59] C: EHLO BASILISK
[16:51:59] S: 250-bjapp41
[16:51:59] S: 250-LININGPIPE
[16:51:59] S: 250-ETRN
[16:51:59] S: 250-AUTH LOGIN PLAIN
[16:51:59] S: 250-AUTH=LOGIN PLAIN
[16:51:59] S: 250 8BITMIME
[16:51:59] C: AUTH PLAIN
[16:52:09] S: 535 CoremailSys:Error: authentication failed

(Everything preceded by C: is sent by TB, everything preceded by S: is sent by the server)

According to RFC2554 the server has to answer the AUTH command from the client with a 334 ready response. The ready response isn't issued and after 10 seconds the server decides that it's taking too long and issues a 535 error message.

The other clients that were tried apparently set a time out to start sending the authentication data without a 334 response. I'll pass this to the development team.