Sending E-mail with Pine via Earthlink

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Poughkeepsie, New York

Sending E-mail with Pine via Earthlink

Earthlink now requires authentication to send e-mail via their SMTP servers. Here is how to configure pine to use Earthlink as the outbound SMTP server.
Last updated: 11 June 2007
Earthlink now requires authentication to send e-mail via their SMTP servers, which is actually a good idea, as it will help prevent spam. Earthlink does not officially support Pine or Linux (according to a chat with customer service professional "Stalin K." on 8 June 2007), but it is not that difficult to configure pine to send e-mail via earthlink's relay if you are a subscriber (you have a valid Earthlink e-mail address and password).
Outbound SMTP
By either using Setup -> Config or by editing your .pinerc file change the smtp-server to use the earthlink SMTP server on port 587 with your full username, and with TLS to insure that the exchange of passwords is encrypted. It should look something like
smtpauth.earthlink.net:587/user=Joe.User@earthlink.net/tls
though of course with your own username (remember the @earthlink.net).
From Google's documentation of gmail it looks like this would also work to go through gmail, but I have not tried it. See Configuring other mail clients

Inbound POP3
(Earthlink uses POP3, but I've not yet gotten it to work with pine. I don't care, I just need the outbound link to relay from my own domain.)

Inbound IMAP
It looks like both Earthlink and Google do not support IMAP. You have to use POP3
Acknowledgements
NO thanks to Earthlink tech support. They didn't know what I was talking about and said they don't support Linux. Luddites!
However, the following article has useful raw information about server settings: http://kb.earthlink.net/case.asp?article=28968, including DNS servers.

Copyright © 2007 by Spy Hill Research http://www.Spy-Hill.com/~myers/help/linux/EarthlinkPine.html (served by Islay.spy-hill.com) Last modified: 11 June 2007