[VB.NET 2010] Sending mail only works sometimes
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Long time lurker, first time poster... Ok, going to do a bit of a sum up here. The issues you are seeing are most likey caused by a firewall on the user side, either on the machine or their ISP. A lot of ISP's won't allow residental users to send email out on port 25. Since you don't know what port is allowed, you'd have to have the user configure your app. Not a good idea. Or it could be a local firewall blocking the message because it doesn't know your app is allowed to send. Again, a configuration by your user would need to occur, and again, not a great idea, especially if you don't like support calls. I'm with those that think it's a bad idea to use an SMTP transport to send an error message for an app outside of your network (we use smtp extensively inside our network), mainly because of security concerns. The username/password combo is used to authenticate a relay of the email message. This is bad to use outside of your network because someone could reverse engineer your code, find the username and password and start spamming through your mail server. If you insist on using SMTP, I would do a TRY CATCH to make sure the app can handle its own error and maybe set a counter to try more then once, then give up. You would also create a text file that you could have the user send to you as a backup. If I was doing this, I'd probably look at creating a web service that the client app can send the message to and have it then emailed to me and/or inserted into a database. The issue there might be that the user has to approve the outbound request, but that shouldn't be too big of a deal. If you need a web service sample, let me know. Cheers, Mike
Meh, im really lost now. What to do? Keep trying and use the code others kindly provided in the thread, or drop bug reporting via email completely and try http/web service instead. I don't know anything about http servers and web services so yes, a sample would be nice. Also, i don't feel like adding my username and password into my code as it can be retrieved from the compiled exe. :confused:
Virtual Space Shuttle Astronaut
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Meh, im really lost now. What to do? Keep trying and use the code others kindly provided in the thread, or drop bug reporting via email completely and try http/web service instead. I don't know anything about http servers and web services so yes, a sample would be nice. Also, i don't feel like adding my username and password into my code as it can be retrieved from the compiled exe. :confused:
Virtual Space Shuttle Astronaut
Forget the email. You're (incorrectly) assuming that all your users have access to an unprotected smtp server, and that they have configured this server correctly. This will not be true: - in corporate environments, where exchange or lotus notes rule, and any good sysadmin will block access to the corporate smtp servers. - if the user uses some form of webmail (gmail, hotmail, yahoo), and hasn't setup a local mail client. You may want to setup an smtp server for these users, which you would run yourself, but I would strongly advise against it. You would be creating an open smtp relay that would attract spammers, and will get you blacklisted on smtp relays worldwide. Furthermore, most corporate environments and some ISP's block SMTP traffic. Much better to report through some kind of webservice. If you're new to this, a good place to start reading is WCF (Windows Communication Foundation). Note that you will need a fixed IP address at your side of the deal, and that you will have to configure routers, firewalls, and web servers. If you can't easily get a fixed IP address, you may be able to get away with some with some free dynamic DNS provider. If this all sounds horrible complicated, get yourself a cheap asp.net provider, and host your error reporting code there.
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Meh, im really lost now. What to do? Keep trying and use the code others kindly provided in the thread, or drop bug reporting via email completely and try http/web service instead. I don't know anything about http servers and web services so yes, a sample would be nice. Also, i don't feel like adding my username and password into my code as it can be retrieved from the compiled exe. :confused:
Virtual Space Shuttle Astronaut
What version of VS are you writing your code in? It will help me get you going in the right direction. Also, do you have access to a windows hosting provider or would you try and host this yourself? Sorry if any of this is causing more confusion, but I think you'll be better off in the long run. Mike
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What version of VS are you writing your code in? It will help me get you going in the right direction. Also, do you have access to a windows hosting provider or would you try and host this yourself? Sorry if any of this is causing more confusion, but I think you'll be better off in the long run. Mike
Im using Visual Studio 2010. My host is using Linux systems to host its sites, so ASP and ASP.Net is a no-go. Thanks for helping me, Mike. ;)
Virtual Space Shuttle Astronaut
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Meh, im really lost now. What to do? Keep trying and use the code others kindly provided in the thread, or drop bug reporting via email completely and try http/web service instead. I don't know anything about http servers and web services so yes, a sample would be nice. Also, i don't feel like adding my username and password into my code as it can be retrieved from the compiled exe. :confused:
Virtual Space Shuttle Astronaut
it never needs your username/password; it needs to log into the sender's email service, not yours. :)
Luc Pattyn [Forum Guidelines] [My Articles] Nil Volentibus Arduum
Please use <PRE> tags for code snippets, they preserve indentation, improve readability, and make me actually look at the code.
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it never needs your username/password; it needs to log into the sender's email service, not yours. :)
Luc Pattyn [Forum Guidelines] [My Articles] Nil Volentibus Arduum
Please use <PRE> tags for code snippets, they preserve indentation, improve readability, and make me actually look at the code.
No i mean the username/password to access my http server.
Virtual Space Shuttle Astronaut
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No i mean the username/password to access my http server.
Virtual Space Shuttle Astronaut
It does not necessarily require user name/password. All you need to know on the server is: who and when the report was sent and what does the report say. You could implement some sort of hash to filter out spam traffic at http end. If ASP/.Net is no go and you have PHP skills, you can rustle up a simple form to accept the above information on your website. *Then* you could send an email or insert into database or whatever from the webserver. You could then submit this form from your desktop application code. It does seem daunting at first for a bug reporting mechanism - but this is a much reliable approach than trying to send the email. Hope this helps.
Shreekar
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It does not necessarily require user name/password. All you need to know on the server is: who and when the report was sent and what does the report say. You could implement some sort of hash to filter out spam traffic at http end. If ASP/.Net is no go and you have PHP skills, you can rustle up a simple form to accept the above information on your website. *Then* you could send an email or insert into database or whatever from the webserver. You could then submit this form from your desktop application code. It does seem daunting at first for a bug reporting mechanism - but this is a much reliable approach than trying to send the email. Hope this helps.
Shreekar
No i do not have PHP skills, but i figure it would'nt be that hard to make an online form for the bug reporting? Im also waiting for Mike's example.
Virtual Space Shuttle Astronaut
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Won't DefaultCrendentials be enough then? If i understand correctly, DefaultCrendentials get the username and password of the sender's email client, right? Then there's not need for them to enter it?
Virtual Space Shuttle Astronaut
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No i do not have PHP skills, but i figure it would'nt be that hard to make an online form for the bug reporting? Im also waiting for Mike's example.
Virtual Space Shuttle Astronaut
Sorry I was slow at getting back to you. Got sidetracked with my project and then it was all downhill from there. I'm assuming you are still looking for some sort of solution to this. Are you interested in a method to create an execption report that can be emailed to you, or post to a web page? Mike
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Sorry I was slow at getting back to you. Got sidetracked with my project and then it was all downhill from there. I'm assuming you are still looking for some sort of solution to this. Are you interested in a method to create an execption report that can be emailed to you, or post to a web page? Mike
That's ok. Im looking for an online bug reporter form as an built-in reporter form in my application doesn't work very well. Users click the bug Reporter menuitem in my application at which point the online bug reporter form opens in their browser, from there, they can specify all the info and in addition upload an exception report. I have yet to find out how to produce such a report. Thanks for your offer to help out. :)
Virtual Space Shuttle Astronaut