Anyway, my basic question is : this worked fine for years with perl 5.8.8, the mail server has not changed, my program has not changed, so any clue about what is happening here?

Something did actually change, probably a missing prerequisite, like say, some Authen::SASL module for some AUTH mechanism... the part of the error/debug trace you omitted

In reply to Re: SMTP "auth" problem after upgrade by Anonymous Monk
in thread SMTP "auth" problem after upgrade by soliplaya

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