I am getting errors from my board when it tries to send an E-mail:

An error has occurred:

Unable to connect to the SMTP server. The following error was returned: Unknown error

The server either does not exist, or rejected the connection.

Please ensure that the UBB is allowed to relay mail through the server.

I am running Windows 2003 and Exchange 2003. I have played around with a bunch of relay settings in Exchange but can't seem to get this thing to send mail. Any Exchagne 2003 Gurus out there know what I am missing?

No Exchange 2003 Gurus out there?

i don't think exchange has something to do with sending emails it's more to manage mailboxes (though I don't have a clue really)

allen wrote an article on how to setup SMTP some time back
http://www.ubbdev.com/db/ultimatebb.php/topic/2/37.html

That is an excellent article and I have already been through it a few times. It iw written for Exchange 2000 I beleive and Exchagne 2003 is very different. I attempted to set it up as close as I could figure it out to that article. I am hoping someoone that is using Exchange 2003 can tell me what the settings are in this version.

Are there any other forums that may have some ideas for UBB/Exchange 2003 integration?

Unknown error usually indicates that there was no SMTP service listening on port 25 of the target machine.

Unfortunately, we have no documentation regarding Exchange. I'd suggest refering to the MSKB, as it may have some information on turning on normal SMTP services.

SMTP is up and running and processing mail for about 20 domains. My issue is how to allow UBB mail to pass through my server.

Can other email clients (not made by Microsoft ) talk to the same SMTP server?

Is the webserver permitted to relay on the Virtual SMTP Server. I'm still on Exchange 2000, but I had to add allowed relays for an internal server in the Virtual SMTP Server in System Manager.

I use some mailing software to send out newsletters and that works fine (non MS).

I tried opening up relay to all and it still gives me the same error.

Exchange 2003 does not have the same setup as Exchange 2000 for the virtual SMTP server, it is very confusing.

Where does UBB store the username password to use for the mail server?

According to Charles' Post there are some adjustments that can be made to recent versions for Authentication that he can do via a support ticket, however, I'm not sure if they are still valid or not considering the post is almost a year old.

Charles,

Is there a way to use authentication for SMTP still?
That sounds like it may help us Exchage 2003 users.

Through a few small code changes, we can use the Auth::SASL Perl module to send SMTP authentication.

However, the problem you are having here is occuring while actually establishing the connection to the SMTP server. You can't authenticate if you can't connect in the first place.

I don't think it is a connecton problem. I think the rejected the message is the part that is causing problems. Are there any logs with UBB that will tell me if it is getting to the mail server at all?

The error message above only occurs while trying to connect.

No connection can be established. There is no other way to interpret that error message. The error is provided by the native perl networking modules, not the UBB.

Only once the connection is established can any inspection of the SMTP transaction take place.

Have you tried configuring your UBB to use an external SMTP server? Have you tried making a UBB installation on another machine entirely and having it talk to the existing SMTP server? We need to establish if this is a problem with the SMTP server not accepting connections, or with the Perl installation not being able to create connections.

I just tried two other mail servers and got the same error message.
Does that make it a PERL problem?

Sounds like it.

Please uninstall and reinstall Perl on the machine. After the reinstall, make sure that the IUSR_ account for the machine has at least read access to the entire c:Perl directory tree.

If there is any software network firewall on the machine, disable it as a troubleshooting measure.

I reinstalled PERL and set the permissions as you said. I had PERL installed in D:PERL but I reinstalled it to C:PERL thinking it may help. Now I get a page not found as soon as I try to connect to my forums. Is there a file that I need to edit to tell UBB where PERL is?

cp.cgi and ultimatebb.cgi line1

Should cgi files be mapped to PERLis.dll or Perl.exe?
I used Perl.exe.

I am still getting the same error with this new install of PERL:

An error has occurred:

Unable to connect to the SMTP server. The following error was returned: Unknown error

The server either does not exist, or rejected the connection.

Please ensure that the UBB is allowed to relay mail through the server.

You should be using the Perl EXE file - the DLL is a bit unstable when used with UBB.classic.

Okay, so it seems that Perl is still being denied the ability to connect to the SMTP machine... Time to try from an outside source to be 110% sure. Do you have any other machines available to you (preferably a Unix-based machine as to also eliminate Windows from the problem list) that you can try a UBB install on?

I don't have any Unix based machines nor do I know anything about UNIX. Does anyone have a UNIX UBB test board that I can allow relay on my Exchange server to and see if it works?

Keep in mind I did try two other mail servers as well (they were both Exchange also though). Does anyone have a mail server that I can point to for testing?

I think from here, it'd be best if we picked this up in a support ticket. Chances are that your server is in-house, and we'd want to arrange proper access, etc.

In the ticket body, please include the URL to this topic ( http://www.ubbcentral.com/ubb/ultimatebb.php/topic/10/3079.html ) and a request that the ticket be assigned to me. Thanks!

Charles decided while working with me on a support ticket that this is a PERL issue, not an exchange issue. Is anyone using Windows 2003 for their UBB and using some type of E-mail notification? If so, what version of PERL are you using? Perhaps I need an older version of PERL?