Django how to send_mail via local sendmail

Using Django
1

I would like to send out email via local sendmail. my email settings in settings.py is below

EMAIL_BACKEND='django.core.mail.backends.smtp.EmailBackend'
EMAIL_HOST = 'localhost'
EMAIL_PORT = 25
EMAIL_HOST_USER = ''
EMAIL_HOST_PASSWORD = ''
EMAIL_USE_TLS = False
DEFAULT_FROM_EMAIL = 'default_from_email@email.com'

the error is [Errno 61] Connection refused

2

What are you using as your local MTA? Is it listening on port 25?

3

thanks Ken. I use default FreeBSD sendmail(/usr/sbin/sendmail).

It is listening on port 25. “220 domain_name ESMTP Sendmail 8.15.2/8.15.2; Tue, 22 Dec 2020 10:51:52”

4

So I’m guessing you got that last line by doing something like telnet localhost 25?

I’m afraid I’m not going to be much help here - I switched from sendmail to postfix about 10 years ago. But I’m willing to try and walk through this with you.

5

Thank you for the reply Ken.
Yes the telnet localhost 25’s result is below.

“220 domain_name ESMTP Sendmail 8.15.2/8.15.2; Tue, 22 Dec 2020 10:51:52”

6

Unfortunately, I can’t recreate your symptoms.

I installed sendmail in a server. I added the following lines to the settings.py file of a test project:

EMAIL_BACKEND='django.core.mail.backends.smtp.EmailBackend'
EMAIL_HOST = 'localhost'
EMAIL_PORT = 25
EMAIL_HOST_USER = ''
EMAIL_HOST_PASSWORD = ''
EMAIL_USE_TLS = False
DEFAULT_FROM_EMAIL = 'default_from_email@email.com'

I then ran the following lines from a shell_plus session:

from django.core.mail import send_mail
send_mail('Subject', 'This is a message', 'ken@localhost', ['root@localhost'],fail_silently=False,)

And it all worked. No errors were thrown by the code and the emails were put in the /var/spool/mqueue directory.

All this was done on an Ubuntu 20.04 system, which I know has some (significant) differences regarding network controls and many other security/stability items that are in BSD and not in Linux.

I guess all I can say here then is that I think the issues are environmental and not necessarily Django related.

Does FreeBSD support the sendmail command-line client where you can try to do the following?

$ sendmail -v someone@email.com
From: you@yourdomain.com
Subject: This is the subject field of the email
This is the message to be sent.
.

Note: For all lines after the sendmail command, there will be no prompt. The line consisting of only a period - . followed by a new line marks the end of the entered data, and then you’ll see sendmail sending the email.

7

Thanks again Ken.FreeBSD does support command-line and It works perfectly fine. I don’t understand why when I try from Django with same setting as you, I get an connection refuse error…

8

Sorry, I don’t have any help to offer here. I haven’t used FreeBSD in 15 - 20 years, and don’t have a system available to do any experimentation with.
Not that I would ever recommend doing this for real, but I might try running the code as root to see if it’s some type of permissions issue involved.
It wouldn’t be an answer, but might give you a clue as to where to continue looking.