Re: Where is the setting for mail server config?
Woohoo!!! Got the PEAR-shaped workaround working.
A guy called Rob Hartzenberg at my hosting provider wrote the plugin for bbpress that uses the PEAR mail package to allow authentication.
All I needed to do was:
1. download & edit the plugin file to reflect my own SMTP host, port number, username (email address) & my password;
2. replace the last line of the bb_mail() function in “bb-includes/pluggable.php with 2 lines of code supplied in the installation instructions;
3. Login as keymaster & activate the plugin.
Voila!
I will be uploading the plugin shortly as I reckon there will be people in need of this workaround as quite a lot of hosting providers require SMTP authentication.
What a relief 
many thanks to everyone that tried to assist & an even bigger THANK YOU to Rob at Imaginet.
