Postie with Road Runner Email : Correcting "502 Command is locally disabled" error

Notes on Email Issue Using POSTIE

When using POSTIE to send an email message the following error message was observed:

Login 'myECS@woh.rr.com' failed: 502 Command is locally disabled

This error occurred running Omnipotence Software Event Control System (ECS) 4.4 and sending email with the "POSTIE" command line interface email utility. ECS has a class called the "Email-Class" that accepts parameters that are used to create in a .BAT file to execute POSTIE. When this .BAT file is executed it produces .LOG file that contains the output from POSTIE. Examining the .BAT file shows the following:

postie -v:5 -host:pop-server.roadrunner.com -user:myECS@woh.rr.com -pass:mypassword -from:myHomeAutoStatus@woh.rr.com -to:5555551212@cingularme.com -s:"ECS Alert!" -msg:"This is a test message" > "myTextMessage.log" 2>&1
echo > "myTextMessage.done"


Note this is a test message to my cell phone and I have replaced the phone number with a dummy value. The -v:5 is a verbose setting for POSTIE, with 5 being the most verbose. My ISP "Road Runner" uses ESMTP instead of the standard SMTP. From the Wikipedia article "Extended SMTP (ESMTP), sometimes referred to as Enhanced SMTP, is a definition of protocol extensions to the Simple Mail Transfer Protocol standard". One of the features of ESMTP for ISPs is that it grants email send permission to email client programs based on the location of the sender instead of a username and password. As a result I can send email via my ISP's mail server so long as I am at home, accessing the internet from my cable modem. If I am attempting to send email with my ISP's mail server when I am away from home, an error is returned. This relates to POSTIE and the "502 Command is locally disabled" error message because the "-user:" command is not needed by this mail server, because it does not support authentication. The error is corrected by removing the "-user:" and "-pass:" commands. The POSTIE command then looks like:

postie -v:5 -host:pop-server.roadrunner.com -from:myHomeAutoStatus@woh.rr.com -to:5555551212@cingularme.com -s:"ECS Alert!" -msg:"This is a test message" > "myTextMessage.log" 2>&1
echo > "myTextMessage.done"

The User and Password fields in ECS should be set to "none".

Other Observations

Another error message that can easily occur with POSTIE is :

Could not send: error= -1
Status: 550 Sender address is missing a domain

This will occur if a valid domain is not associated with the "-from:" command above, as shown below:

postie -v:5 -host:pop-server.roadrunner.com -from:myHomeAutoStatus -to:5555551212@cingularme.com -s:"ECS Alert!" -msg:"This is a test message" > "myTextMessage.log" 2>&1
echo > "myTextMessage.done"

My ISP has two addresses associated with its email server, a pop server address for checking incoming email and a smtp server address for sending email. I have found that EITHER can be specified in the "-host:" command to send mail, as shown below:

postie -v:5 -host:smtp-server.roadrunner.com -from:myHomeAutoStatus@woh.rr.com -to:5555551212@cingularme.com -s:"ECS Alert!" -msg:"This is a test message" > "myTextMessage.log" 2>&1
echo > "myTextMessage.done"