Question

I tried to start a smtp server with python with the following code:

import smtplib
smtp_server = smtplib.SMTP('localhost')

And I get the following error:

File "test.py", line 2, in <module>
    smtp_server = smtplib.SMTP('localhost')
  File "/usr/local/lib/python2.7/smtplib.py", line 242, in __init__
    (code, msg) = self.connect(host, port)
  File "/usr/local/lib/python2.7/smtplib.py", line 302, in connect
    self.sock = self._get_socket(host, port, self.timeout)
  File "/usr/local/lib/python2.7/smtplib.py", line 277, in _get_socket
    return socket.create_connection((port, host), timeout)
  File "/usr/local/lib/python2.7/socket.py", line 571, in create_connection
    raise err

I tried to telnet localhost 25 and telnet localhost but they both give the following error:

Trying 127.0.0.1...
telnet: connect to address 127.0.0.1: Connection refused
telnet: Unable to connect to remote host: Connection refused

The same python code runs perfectly well on one of my other machines.

Any advice ?

Thanks.

UPDATE:

The machine I’m having problem with is running Python 2.7.2, while the machine that the code works well is running Python 2.6.2. I don’t know if this is one of the reasons.

Answer 1

smtplib is SMTP protocol client. What you are looking for is smtpd.