Debugging with Oracle's utl_smtp - oracle

Question

A client of mine uses Oracle 9i's utl_smtp to send mails out notifications to managers when their employees have made travel requests and they woul like quite a few changes made to the mailouts done.
We're having a lot of problems getting utl_smtp to talk to any smtp server on our network. We've even tried installing free smtp server on the oracle box but it will not spot the mail server running on port 25. The error code is ORA-29278.
So two questions really.
Does anyone have any experience setting up email using Oracle's utl_smtp utility and have any suggestions as to where we might be going wrong.
Does anyone know if it is possible to get utl_smtp to dump text emails to a directory much as you can do if you're using system.net.mail's specifiedpickupdirectory config setting. This would be by far the preferable option.
Thanks, Dan

Answer 1

Looks like the HELO is the problem. Please can we check with a simple testcase...
set serveroutput on
declare
lConnection UTL_SMTP.CONNECTION;
begin
lConnection := UTL_SMTP.OPEN_CONNECTION(your_smtp_server);
DBMS_OUTPUT.PUT_LINE('Opened ok');
UTL_SMTP.HELO(lConnection, your_client_machine_name);
DBMS_OUTPUT.PUT_LINE('HELO ok');
UTL_SMTP.MAIL(lConnection, your_email_address);
UTL_SMTP.RCPT(lConnection, your_email_address);
DBMS_OUTPUT.PUT_LINE('Addressing ok');
end;
/

Answer 2

Looks like we've resolved this.
To answer the two questions.
Double check that the schema calling utl_smtp has execute permissions on sys.utl_smtp, sys.utl_tcp and sys.dbms_lob. Also check that at no time the message being sent is > 32Kb.
No there is no way to get utl_smtp to dump emails to a directory a la system.net.mail.
Thanks to cagcowboy for the help.

Answer 3

Yes, we can telnet to the server.
-- ****** Object: Stored Procedure TRAVELADMIN_DEV.HTML_EMAIL Script Date: 22/08/2008 12:41:02 ******
CREATE PROCEDURE "HTML_EMAIL" (
p_to in varchar2,
p_cc in varchar2,
p_from in varchar2,
p_subject in varchar2,
p_text in varchar2 default null,
p_html in varchar2 default null
)
is
l_boundary varchar2(255) default 'a1b2c3d4e3f2g1';
l_connection utl_smtp.connection;
l_body_html clob := empty_clob; --This LOB will be the email message
l_offset number;
l_ammount number;
l_temp varchar2(32767) default null;
p_smtp_hostname varchar2(30):= 'rockies';
p_smtp_portnum varchar2(2) := '25';
begin
l_connection := utl_smtp.open_connection( p_smtp_hostname, p_smtp_portnum );
utl_smtp.helo( l_connection, p_smtp_hostname );
utl_smtp.mail( l_connection, p_from );
utl_smtp.rcpt( l_connection, p_to );
l_temp := l_temp || 'MIME-Version: 1.0' || chr(13) || chr(10);
l_temp := l_temp || 'To: ' || p_to || chr(13) || chr(10);
IF ((p_cc <> NULL) OR (LENGTH(p_cc) > 0)) THEN
l_temp := l_temp || 'Cc: ' || p_cc || chr(13) || chr(10);
utl_smtp.rcpt( l_connection, p_cc );
END IF;
l_temp := l_temp || 'From: ' || p_from || chr(13) || chr(10);
l_temp := l_temp || 'Subject: ' || p_subject || chr(13) || chr(10);
l_temp := l_temp || 'Reply-To: ' || p_from || chr(13) || chr(10);
l_temp := l_temp || 'Content-Type: multipart/alternative; boundary=' ||
chr(34) || l_boundary || chr(34) || chr(13) ||
chr(10);
----------------------------------------------------
-- Write the headers
dbms_lob.createtemporary( l_body_html, false, 10 );
dbms_lob.write(l_body_html,length(l_temp),1,l_temp);
----------------------------------------------------
-- Write the text boundary
l_offset := dbms_lob.getlength(l_body_html) + 1;
l_temp := '--' || l_boundary || chr(13)||chr(10);
l_temp := l_temp || 'content-type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii' ||
chr(13) || chr(10) || chr(13) || chr(10);
dbms_lob.write(l_body_html,length(l_temp),l_offset,l_temp);
----------------------------------------------------
-- Write the plain text portion of the email
l_offset := dbms_lob.getlength(l_body_html) + 1;
dbms_lob.write(l_body_html,length(p_text),l_offset,p_text);
----------------------------------------------------
-- Write the HTML boundary
l_temp := chr(13)||chr(10)||chr(13)||chr(10)||'--' || l_boundary ||
chr(13) || chr(10);
l_temp := l_temp || 'content-type: text/html;' ||
chr(13) || chr(10) || chr(13) || chr(10);
l_offset := dbms_lob.getlength(l_body_html) + 1;
dbms_lob.write(l_body_html,length(l_temp),l_offset,l_temp);
----------------------------------------------------
-- Write the HTML portion of the message
l_offset := dbms_lob.getlength(l_body_html) + 1;
dbms_lob.write(l_body_html,length(p_html),l_offset,p_html);
----------------------------------------------------
-- Write the final html boundary
l_temp := chr(13) || chr(10) || '--' || l_boundary || '--' || chr(13);
l_offset := dbms_lob.getlength(l_body_html) + 1;
dbms_lob.write(l_body_html,length(l_temp),l_offset,l_temp);
----------------------------------------------------
-- Send the email in 1900 byte chunks to UTL_SMTP
l_offset := 1;
l_ammount := 1900;
utl_smtp.open_data(l_connection);
while l_offset < dbms_lob.getlength(l_body_html) loop
utl_smtp.write_data(l_connection,
dbms_lob.substr(l_body_html,l_ammount,l_offset));
l_offset := l_offset + l_ammount ;
l_ammount := least(1900,dbms_lob.getlength(l_body_html) - l_ammount);
end loop;
utl_smtp.close_data(l_connection);
utl_smtp.quit( l_connection );
dbms_lob.freetemporary(l_body_html);
end;

Answer 4

The OPEN_CONNECTION parameter should be the FQDN or IP address of the server you're connecting to.
The HELO parameter should be the FQDN of the machine you're connecting from.
If this doesn't work, do you know which line it errors on?