Sendmail Errno[61] Connection Refused

I've been trying to get my application to mail some outputted text to an email. For simplification I have isolated the script :

import smtplib
import sys
import os

SERVER = "localhost"

FROM = os.getlogin()
TO = [raw_input("To : ")]

SUBJECT = "Message From " + os.getlogin()

print "Message : (End with ^D)"
TEXT = ''
while 1:
    line = sys.stdin.readline()
    if not line:
        break
    TEXT = TEXT + line

# Prepare actual message

message = """\
From: %s
To: %s
Subject: %s

%s
""" % (FROM, ", ".join(TO), SUBJECT, TEXT)

# Send the mail

server = smtplib.SMTP(SERVER)
server.sendmail(FROM, TO, message)
server.quit()

This script outputs :

    Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/Users/christianlaustsen/Dropbox/Apps - Python/mail/smtplib_mail.py", line 32, in <module>
    server = smtplib.SMTP(SERVER)
  File "/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.6/lib/python2.6/smtplib.py", line 239, in __init__
    (code, msg) = self.connect(host, port)
  File "/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.6/lib/python2.6/smtplib.py", line 295, in connect
    self.sock = self._get_socket(host, port, self.timeout)
  File "/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.6/lib/python2.6/smtplib.py", line 273, in _get_socket
    return socket.create_connection((port, host), timeout)
  File "/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.6/lib/python2.6/socket.py", line 512, in create_connection
    raise error, msg
error: [Errno 61] Connection refused

So as you can see, the connection is being refused. I'm running Python 2.6 on Mac OS X Snow Leopard (if that's relevant).

I have tried searching around a lot, but haven't been able to find a solution. Any help will be appreciated.

Solution 1:

If you start a local server as follows:

python -m smtpd -n -c DebuggingServer localhost:1025

Make sure to modify the mail-sending code to use the non-standard port number:

server = smtplib.SMTP(SERVER, 1025)
server.sendmail(FROM, TO, message)
server.quit()

Solution 2:

My guess is that you do not have any SMTP server installed on your local machine.

If your emails are not sensitive, open a Gmail account and send your emails using it with Python.

Solution 3:

Start a simple SMTP server with Python like so:

python -m smtpd -n -c DebuggingServer localhost:1025

Solution 4:

If you don't want to run a separate server, and if you're only using Unix, you can use this technique, copied from http://www.yak.net/fqa/84.html, and originally from the Python FAQ:

On Unix, it's very simple, using sendmail. The location of the sendmail program varies between systems; sometimes it is /usr/lib/sendmail, sometime /usr/sbin/sendmail. The sendmail manual page will help you out. Here's some sample code:

SENDMAIL = "/usr/sbin/sendmail" # sendmail location
import os
p = os.popen("%s -t" % SENDMAIL, "w")
p.write("To: [email protected]\n")
p.write("Subject: test\n")
p.write("\n") # blank line separating headers from body
p.write("Some text\n")
p.write("some more text\n")
sts = p.close()
if sts != 0:
    print "Sendmail exit status", sts