I think this wasn't a bug, but rather a problem in the way the class
sun.net.smtp.SmtpClient was being used in this case. Specifically, as noted in
the "Comments" part of this bug entry, the from() call must come
after the to() call. This is part of the SMTP protocol, which says
that the order of commands for an SMTP connection should be:

HELO (connection establishment)
MAIL (specifies who's sending mail)
RCPT (specifies who's getting it)
DATA (body of message)
QUIT

See Stevens "TCP/IP Illustrated, Volume 1" or RFC 822 for a
description of the expected sequence of events in SMTP.

If one sends RCPT before MAIL, the server balks. Perhaps the
interface of this class should be changed to disallow anything
but the proper sequence, but that's a different story.

Closing out the bug.

Dave Brown
###@###.###


Problem: sending mail via the SMTP class fails with 5.4
Generic_101945-34, but works ok with 5.4 Generic_101945-06.

=== failure mode
wizardinc% uname -a
SunOS wizardinc 5.4 Generic_101945-34 sun4m sparc
wizardinc% cd ~/scratch/bug-java
/home/kern/scratch/bug-java
wizardinc% setenv CLASSPATH .
wizardinc% source ~/bin/java.csh
wizardinc% java Mail kern@eng
sun.net.smtp.SmtpProtocolException: 503 Need MAIL before RCPT

at sun.net.smtp.SmtpClient.issueCommand(SmtpClient.java:58)
at sun.net.smtp.SmtpClient.toCanonical(SmtpClient.java:63)
at sun.net.smtp.SmtpClient.to(SmtpClient.java:105)
at Mail.main(Mail.java:38)
error: 503 Need MAIL before RCPT


=== testcase

import java.io.*;
import java.applet.Applet;
import sun.net.smtp.*;

public class Mail extends Applet {

private static void error(String msg) {
  System.err.println("error: " + msg);
}

public static void main (String argv[]) {
  /* needed to run standalone; may be helpful for unit tests */
  CommentsBox c = new CommentsBox();
  PrintStream pstream;
  try {
    SmtpClient smtp = new SmtpClient();
    String mailto = new String (argv[0]);
    smtp.to(mailto);
    String from = "Dev2";
    if (from == null)
      from = "VerifierApplet";
    smtp.from(from);
    PrintStream out = smtp.startMessage();
    out.println("From: " + from);
    out.println("To: " + mailto);
    out.println("Subject: Comments on JDE DevII");
    out.println("");
    out.println("just sending mail");
    out.close();
  }
  catch (IOException e) {
    e.printStackTrace();
    error (e.getMessage());
    System.exit(1);
  }
}
}