Gerald> Hi all. Gerald> I'm running into the most incredibly annoying problem I've Gerald> ever encountered (for the past week at least). Don't exaggerate :-) Gerald> I connect to the Internet via a modem and am dynamically Gerald> assigned IP addresses by my ISP. Naturally, then, I use Gerald> their SMTP server for sending mail. For far so good. Gerald> Every now and then when I try to send mail using VM, Emacs Gerald> will pause for half a minute and then come back saying Gerald> that my SMTP server's hostname is an unknown host. I know Gerald> it's not because I've used it for years. Occasionally, Gerald> GNUS does something similar as well, so I don't think it's Gerald> a VM problem either. Do you have the net-utils XEmacs package installed? If yes, you can try M-x ping RET smtp.intergate.bc.ca RET or even M-x nslookup RET smtp.intergate.bc.ca RET Oh, you SMTP server has multiple addresses. I wonder if ... Default Server: master.ecf.teradyne.com Address: 131.101.192.10 Server: master.ecf.teradyne.com Address: 131.101.192.10 Name: smtp.intergate.ca Addresses: 207.34.179.20, 209.52.161.1, 207.34.179.35 Aliases: smtp.intergate.bc.ca Gerald> What's going on here? Gerald> I compiled my own XEmacs on Mandrake 6.1, so I don't think Gerald> there's a library problem. I've even tried to put in the Gerald> IP address of the SMTP server in /etc/hosts, so I don't Gerald> think it's any kind of DNS issue. Does anyone have any Gerald> idea what's going on? Gerald> I'd appreciate any help anyone can give. Gerald> My email setup, for reference: Gerald> ;; Gerald> ;; Mail Gerald> ;; Gerald> (setq user-full-name "Gerald Gutierrez") Gerald> (setq user-mail-address "gutier(a)intergate.bc.ca") Gerald> (setq mail-self-blind t) Gerald> ;; SMTPMAIL Gerald> (setq send-mail-function 'smtpmail-send-it) Gerald> (setq smtpmail-default-smtp-server "smtp.intergate.bc.ca") Gerald> (setq smtpmail-smtp-service "smtp") Gerald> (setq smtpmail-local-domain nil) Why do you set above variable to nil? Try this: (setq smtpmail-local-domain "intergate.bc.ca"b) Good luck, Adrian Gerald> (setq smtpmail-code-conv-from nil) Gerald> (autoload 'smtpmail-send-it "smtpmail") Gerald> ;; VM Gerald> (autoload 'vm "vm" nil t) Gerald> (autoload 'vm-mail "vm" nil t) Gerald> (setq vm-use-toolbar nil) Gerald> (setq vm-mutable-windows t) Gerald> (setq vm-mutable-frames nil) Gerald> (setq vm-primary-inbox "~/d/vmmail/inbox") Gerald> (setq vm-crash-box-suffix ".crash") Gerald> (setq vm-spool-file-suffixes (list ".spool")) Gerald> (setq vm-folder-directory "~/d/vmmail/") Gerald> (setq vm-spool-files (list Gerald> (list "~/d/vmmail/inbox" Gerald> "~/d/vmmail/inbox.spool" Gerald> "~/d/vmmail/inbox.crash") Gerald> ))