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Android's default email client is supposed to probe the server for the domain of the user's email address per outlook autodiscovery. This bug seems to indicate that at least the first two steps of that protocol do work.

For example, on the first screen, you enter the email address (maria@example.com) and password and touch "Next" and Android should attempt to fetch https://example.com/autodiscover/autodiscover.xml and if that fails, try to fetch https://autodiscover.example.com/autodiscover/autodiscover.xml

However, on THREE separate phones (both 4.4 and version 5), I have found that not to be the case. After touching "Next", Android claims "Checking auto setup information..." but I have watched the web (and email) server logs and NOTHING happens at all. After a few seconds, the phone enters manual setup mode. I also watched for ANY packets hitting the server from the phone's IP address and I got zilch.

So what's Android doing exactly? All I can think is that it's trying (and failing?) to do some kind of DNS lookup. Note that when I use manual setup, everything works fine. I am also able to manually access the autodiscover/autodiscover.xml file manually in the default web browser of the phone (thus my DNS configuration should be fine).

Why do other people reporting on that bug say the first two autodiscover steps work? What else can I do to diagnose the problem? Do I have to root a phone and find a packet sniffer for it?

If no one knows what's going on, can you help me find where to go to try to read the code... maybe reading the code will produce some answers?

user109322
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2 Answers2

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I'm not aware of "outlook Autodiscovery" working properly without having hints in the domain DNS.

I assume you are talking about an "Exchange Server", but can you be a bit more specific about which "Android's default email client", I have 3 in front of me and they each have a different "default" email client installed.

You also don't mention your server, if you mange it, if its hosted by your ISP or a hosting provider -- not all can be configured the same way as the following links will show.

HTH

ISP SPecific http://www.rackspace.com/apps/support/portal/1218 http://kb.intermedia.net/article/1306 http://www.virtuworks.com/how-to-setup-outlook-autodiscovery-for-your-domain/

Microsoft https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/940881 http://blogs.technet.com/b/rmilne/archive/2014/10/02/how-to-check-exchange-autodiscover-srv-record-using-nslookup.aspx

3rd party Blogs https://acbrownit.wordpress.com/2012/12/20/internal-dns-and-exchange-autodiscover/

David Nilson
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  • Thanks for replying! If you take a look at the spec, DNS (SRV) setup is not used for the first steps (although I do have those). However, standard A records for example.com and autodiscover.example.com are of course required, and because I can access the xml in the phone browser, those are obviously fine. How my server is hosted is not relevant as long as I can monitor traffic to it, which I have already shown (no traffic comes to the server from Android). – user109322 Jun 12 '15 at 19:42
  • Also, as for how to be specific about the default email client, I don't know enough, I thought Android only has one default email client? Please tell me how to give more info (but note this happened on three phones so the problem seems universal). Thanks again! – user109322 Jun 12 '15 at 19:45
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I have noticed the same thing, however when I add the account as an exchange account as opposed to an e-mail account, I do get an HTTP hit on /autodiscover/autodiscover.xml. However, after that it tells me the following:

Unable to set up account

You entered an incorrect server address or the server requires a protocol version that Email does not support

This is the accompanying access log (anonymised somewhat):

123.456.789.0 - username@domain.com [08/Mar/2016:14:49:42 +0100] "POST /autodiscover/autodiscover.xml HTTP/1.1" 200 898 "-" "Android-SAMSUNG-SM-G920F/101.60001, Android-SAMSUNG-SM-G920F/101.60001"
123.456.789.0 - - [08/Mar/2016:14:49:52 +0100] "GET / HTTP/1.1" 200 3525 "-" "Mozilla/5.0 (Linux; Android 6.0.1; SM-G920F Build/MMB29K; wv) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/4.0 Chrome/48.0.2564.106 Mobile Safari/537.36"
123.456.789.0 - username [08/Mar/2016:14:49:53 +0100] "OPTIONS /Microsoft-Server-ActiveSync?Cmd=OPTIONS&User=username&DeviceId=FOOBAR&DeviceType=SAMSUNGSMG920F HTTP/1.1" 200 3508 "-" "Android-SAMSUNG-SM-G920F/101.60001"

```

I guess it's a step closer not it's not quite there.

strikernl
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