mail mystery

[dep]

said Net Llama!:

| Youv'e provided basically no information other than to state that
| *something* is failing.  Are you getting an error message?  If so,
| what it is?

that's the problem -- all i know is that something is failing. it just 
times out, kmail throws its usual and misleading "no connection" error 
(which it throws no matter what the problem is, unless it's a rejected 
password).

hence my question as to diagnostics i might perform that might help 
isolate the issue.
-- 
dep