OJS 3.4+ SMTP without authentication on port 25 failing with STARTTLS error

Software Support
1

Hello everyone,

I’m experiencing a persistent issue with OJS 3.4 and 3.5 while trying to configure email delivery via SMTP. Previously, with OJS 3.3, our setup worked perfectly, but it no longer functions in the newer versions.

Our Configuration

We need to send emails using an SMTP server on port 25 without any authentication or encryption.

Here’s our config.inc.php email section:

[email]
default = smtp
smtp = On
smtp_server = smtp.university.edu
smtp_port = 25
smtp_auth = Off
smtp_username =
smtp_password =
smtp_secure = none

The Problem

When trying to send an email, we consistently get the following error in the Apache logs:

Unable to connect with STARTTLS: stream_socket_enable_crypto(): SSL operation failed with code 1. OpenSSL Error messages: error:0A000102:SSL routines::unsupported protocol

This error suggests that OJS is still trying to initiate a STARTTLS handshake, despite smtp_secure being set to none.

What We’ve Tried

To bypass the STARTTLS issue, we have made the following code modifications in the core OJS files:

  1. Modified PHPMailerTransport.php: We changed the code to ensure isSMTP() is used and to explicitly disable security.

    • Changed $mailer->isMail() to $mailer->isSMTP().

    • Added $mailer->SMTPAutoTLS = false; and $mailer->SMTPSecure = ''; to the getPHPMailerMessage function.

  2. Modified vendor files: We applied a fix to the startTLS functions in both PHPMailer and Symfony Mailer to force them to return false, preventing the TLS handshake.

    • In ./lib/pkp/lib/vendor/phpmailer/phpmailer/src/SMTP.php, the startTLS() function was changed to return false;.

    • In ./lib/pkp/lib/vendor/symfony/mailer/Transport/Smtp/Stream/SocketStream.php, the startTls() function was also changed to return false;.

After these changes, the STARTTLS error disappeared, but we started getting a “Connection to ‘smtp.university.edu:25’ timed out.” error instead.

We’ve confirmed that a telnet connection and a basic PHP fsockopen() script both work perfectly from the server’s command line to smtp.university.edu:25. This indicates the issue is not a network or firewall problem, but something specific within the OJS application’s code or its mailer libraries.

Any help or insights on this issue would be greatly appreciated. Thank you!