Email novice requesting help with ISP authorization

[Ilane Walberg]

> Using pine on RedHat 7.3.  Earthlink just updated smtp server over the weekend and I logged on last night only to find 
> I couldn't send email (or fetchmail either - but that's another problem -- I think).  Earthlink is now using SMTP AUTH 
> and with no Linux support, claims if I just set my outgoing server to their new one, that "everything will be all right".  
> I did and it wasn't.
> 
> I have pine's smtp server set to earthlink's smtp server.  When I updated this to their new smtp auth server, on attempting 
> to send I got a message telling me to set up (or configure) authorization (I couldn't email from home so this is from memory).
> 
> Anyway, I really don't understand email configuration that well, so maybe someone out there can help me with the basics:
> 
> First, if I set up pine with smtp server as ISP's server, does that bypass my own sendmail (which starts up at boot time
> by default)?
> 
> I did a google search and found the statement "if  you use pine, authenticate by addding "/user=userid" after smtp server" and
> pine would pick the appropriate level of authentication.  I read this to mean that adding the quoted string to pine's smtp server 
> configuration line, that this may be all I need to do?  I suspect not, (because it's never that easy, is it! ;)  especially as earthlink 
> wants me to use the username 'myaccount at tiac.net' (where myaccount is my earthlink account name).  Could this really mean 
> that I could get by doing "/user=myaccount at tiac.net"?   Earthlink support said I had to use port# 587.   What configuration 
> parameter in pine would this be used in?  Or will pine automagically figure out that it needs to use that port as the default when 
> I add the "/user=" line to smtp server?
> 
> If I still need sendmail, where should I look for a howto on setting up SMTP AUTH?
> 
> I know I'm too ignorant to really administer Linux well, but I've been developing under Unix and Linux for so many years, I'm just 
> too stubborn to change!  Please help me not to be subverted over to the dark side!
> 
> Thanks for any and all advice, 
> Ilane
>