Question

Can someone give me some insight as to why both this:

mailServer = smtplib.SMTP("smtp.gmail.com", 587)

and this:

mailServer = smtplib.SMTP('smtp.gmail.com:587')

Are saying this:

Traceback (most recent call last):
File "<pyshell#23>", line 1, in <module>
mailServer = smtplib.SMTP("smtp.gmail.com", 587)
File "C:\Users\user\Documents\Shuttlecock_new\python\lib\smtplib.py", line 242, in __init__
(code, msg) = self.connect(host, port)
File "C:\Users\user\Documents\Shuttlecock_new\python\lib\smtplib.py", line 302, in connect
self.sock = self._get_socket(host, port, self.timeout)
File "C:\Users\user\Documents\Shuttlecock_new\python\lib\smtplib.py", line 277, in _get_socket
return socket.create_connection((port, host), timeout)
File "C:\Users\user\Documents\Shuttlecock_new\python\lib\socket.py", line 571, in create_connection
raise err
error: [Errno 10060] A connection attempt failed because the connected party did not properly respond after a period of time, or established connection failed because connected host has failed to respond

• I’m in China.
• I have a VPN. I tried it with and without the VPN.
• I have, many times before, used this code to send e-mails from my g-mail account. Suddenly today, I got this error.
• Gmail, if accessed through my chrome browser, works fine. Albeit, it’s taking an unusually long time to send simple e-mails…hmmm

Answer 1

Try specifying a timeout (requires Python 2.6+):

smtplib.SMTP("smtp.gmail.com", 587, timeout=120)

or try connecting via SSL instead of TLS/STARTTLS (with and without timeout):

smtplib.SMTP_SSL("smtp.gmail.com", 465)