Our IT team recently upgraded our corporate mail server to require TLS 1.2 for all SMTP connections. Since then, all scheduled report deliveries via email have stopped working in Cognos 11.2.4.
The error log shows:
SMTP Authentication Failed: 530 5.7.0 Must issue STARTTLS
Connection refused by mail.company.com:587
I’ve verified the mail server settings in Cognos Administration, but I’m not sure where to configure TLS specifically. Our automated report distribution system sends about 200 reports daily to various departments, so this is impacting business operations significantly. The SMTP server requires authentication with TLS encryption now. Has anyone dealt with this configuration change successfully?
Don’t forget to restart the Cognos service after making any configuration changes! I’ve seen situations where admins made all the right changes but forgot to restart, and nothing worked. Also, test with a simple telnet command first to verify basic connectivity to the mail server on port 587 before troubleshooting Cognos-specific issues.
For the JVM parameters, you’ll need to edit the cogconfig.bat (Windows) or cogconfig.sh (Linux) file in your Cognos installation bin directory. Look for the JAVA_OPTS section and add parameters like -Dmail.smtp.starttls.enable=true. However, the more critical issue is usually the certificate trust. You can use the keytool command to list certificates in your cacerts file: keytool -list -keystore /path/to/jre/lib/security/cacerts. The default password is typically ‘changeit’. If your mail server cert isn’t there, you’ll need to import it.
Thanks for the responses. I checked cogstartup.xml and the port is set to 587. The credentials haven’t changed. Where exactly do I add the JVM parameters for TLS support? And how do I verify which certificates are in the Cognos truststore?