What might suddenly provoke this poplib error?

[Peter J. Holzer]

[The OP has stated that the problem has been fixed. The following are
generic comments about troubleshooting.]

On 2022-10-14 11:31:56 +1300, dn wrote:
> On 14/10/2022 01.47, Chris Green wrote:
> >        File "/usr/lib/python3.10/poplib.py", line 157, in _getresp
> >          raise error_proto(resp)
> >      poplib.error_proto: b'-ERR internal server error'
...
> > It seems to be saying that the POP3 server has a problem, if so
> > there's not much I can do about it as it's my hosting provider's
> > mail server.  Is it really saying the server has a problem?
> 
> 
> There's a range of possibilities here. The first question to ask (as
> you probably have) is "what has changed?" - has the Python/PSL on this
> computer been updated*, has the computer's SSL/TLS library been
> updated, etc. Then there are possible changes at 'the other end' - per
> previous responses.

I think this should be the second question. The first quesion is: What
are the actual symptoms?

In this case we have a relatively clear error message which was
obviously[2] sent by the server. So anything else must[1] be consistent
with this error message (and the fact that we were able to get this
error message in the first place).

So it can't[1] be TLS, because if you can't establish a connection, the
server can't send an error message.

The message also says "internal server error", and this is not something
a client should be able to provoke. So it's unlikely to be anything on
the client side.

What's left is that there was a change or operational error on the
server side, so further analysis must be conducted there.

        hp


[1] Take absolute assertions like this with a grain of salt. There are
    always misleading error messages, weird edge cases, etc. But
    consider those only after ruling out everything else.

[2] What may be obvious to one person is of course not necessarily
    obvious to another.

-- 
   _  | Peter J. Holzer    | Story must make more sense than reality.
|_|_) |                    |
| |   | hjp at hjp.at         |    -- Charles Stross, "Creative writing
__/   | http://www.hjp.at/ |       challenge!"
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