I have a diff for a bug that's been present in at least the last two releases of galaxy-dist when python 2.6(.5) is used, which doesn't have SMTPError in smtplib: --- a/lib/galaxy/util/__init__.py +++ b/lib/galaxy/util/__init__.py @@ -607,7 +607,7 @@ def send_mail( frm, to, subject, body, config ): log.error( "The server didn't accept the username/password combination: %s" % e ) s.close() raise - except smtplib.SMTPError, e: + except smtplib.SMTPException, e: log.error( "No suitable authentication method was found: %s" % e ) s.close() raise I had a problem with local instance of galaxy that could not send emails - error emails from the failed job history items for instance. When someone would submit the form they would get an error in the browser and no mail would come to the configured reporting address. Some debugging showed that lib/galaxy/util/__init__.py had a bug, which only surfaced because smtp_user = None smtp_password = None were uncommented in universe_wsgi.ini, which is strange in itself and could point to a bug in the universe configuration builder code as the corresponding code in lib/galaxy/util/__init__.py if config.smtp_username and config.smtp_password: should not be triggered by those uncommented entries. Regards, Alex