Alasdair wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> I have been struggling for sometime to send email from NetBSD 3.0.1 with msmtp via mutt. I finally worked out(?) that it is a problem with a router that advertises IPv6 but does not handle it. I had this problem with fetching packages via FTP using pkgsrc, which was fixed by forcing FTP to use IPv4. 
> I tried to connect via telnet to my isp failed. Tried again using -4 option succeeded.See the following code
> 
> telnet smtp.iprimus.com.au 25
> Trying 1.0.0.0...
> telnet: Unable to connect to remote host: Connection timed out
> $ telnet -4 smtp.iprimus.com.au 25
> Trying 202.138.53.12...

The resolved address 1.0.0.0 seems strange...

> Also afer invoking telnet -4 msmtp is able to connect to my isp and send messages. This only lasts for a short while. I have tried all sorts of things to deliberately get it to revert to failing to send, opening mutt in another xterm, trying to connect via telnet without the -4 option, the only thing that makes it revert s time as far as I can tell. 
> 
> It seems that using telnet -4 is opening sort of gateway that then shuts after some time. 
> 

Could that be an expiring dns record in your caching name server?

Could you try this when the "gateway" expired and it's not working:

dig -4 smtp.iprimus.com.au
dig -6 smtp.iprimus.com.au
dig -4 smtp.iprimus.com.au

Maybe that gives a hint.

> Is it forcing  msmtp to use IPv4? There does not seem to be any way of doing 
> that that I can see from the msmtp man pages.
> 
> Also how do I enable this situation (being able to send mail using msmtp) permanently ? I can see that it could be done by getting mutt to invoke a script that would mimic the actions I just described, but it would be clunky, I don't have that skill level yet and it would "timeout" after a while. Is there a conf file I could edit or some ENV to change or something of that nature?
> 
> Regards,
> 
> Alasdair
> 

Yours,
Andreas