Incoming email problem

[lamp]

Hello,

I have a very strange problem happening on my server.

I am able to send an email out to recipient 'abc' (and he receives it properly)... but when 'abc' replies to the message, I don't actually receive it.

Here is what I did to figure out that there was a problem: I created a netscape.net webmail account and I've been sending emails back and forth from that account to the account on my server. Netscape always receives my mail BUT when I check my inbox (on my server), I only get a few messages back! Instinctively, I checked my Netscape account to see if there were any error messages bounced back... but there were none. I even checked the exim & mail logs on my server but there was no indication of anything going wrong.

I am running FC2 with MailScanner (chirpy's script).

Is there any way of tracing what the heck is happening???

 

[chirpy]

When you say you checked the mail logs, did you actually see the email coming into the server and being processed? If not, you should run:

tail -f /var/log/exim_mainlog

Then send the email and watch what happens in the exim log and post it here.

 

[lamp]

When you say you checked the mail logs, did you actually see the email coming into the server and being processed? If not, you should run:

tail -f /var/log/exim_mainlog

That's just it. I tailed -f /var/log/exim_mainlog and waited to see the usual <= & => messages but nothing came... but on Netscape's end, everything seems to have been delivered fine...

Any thoughts?

 

[lamp]

That's just it. I tailed -f /var/log/exim_mainlog and waited to see the usual <= & => messages but nothing came... but on Netscape's end, everything seems to have been delivered fine...

Any thoughts?

To be more precise here is exactly what I did:

1. tail -f /var/log/exim_mainlog
2. Opened the netscape webmail and sent an email to [email protected]

Waited to see if anything would happen in tail... but nothing.

3. Checked if Netscape received any bounces or failure notices... but there was nothing.
4. Checked the sent-mail folder in Netscape and confirmed that the email was sent to the right address

Waited to see if anything would happen in tail... but nothing.

I repeated the steps above 6 times... each email with a different subject line ("test 1...6") and I got 4 of them. What happened to the other 2... I don't have a clue and there is absolutely nothing in the logs... at a loss here.

Could it be that somehow the messages are silently being dropped?

When I do top & ctrl-M I don't see any high server load or any crazy number of processes sucking resources. I do see 4 MailScanners at the top of the list... but that's normal.

 

[liquidcherry]

same here!!!!

hi ,

i have a similar problem with my server, one account on it cannot receive emails (since 2 days) but can still send!
Even my Provider couldn't help me so far :-(
I havent any problem with my other domains, send and receive works fine.
No changes where made on the server (except the daily ucpc cron what is running nightly)
Chirpy gave me some valued tips, but nothing helped so far....

Any idea folks?

tia

Frank

 

[chirpy]

If you're seeing nothing at all in the exim_mainlog for an SMTP transaction, then the mail isn't getting anywhere near the server which would suggest a DNS problem.

 

[lamp]

If you're seeing nothing at all in the exim_mainlog for an SMTP transaction, then the mail isn't getting anywhere near the server which would suggest a DNS problem.

A DNS problem? Damn. This is going to be difficult to debug since it is happening sporadically.

 

[liquidcherry]

my problem is solved!

hey guys,

just want to let you know that my problem with receiving mails, is resolved.
I disabled Spamassasin and the prob was gone
But why this happened all of the sudden??
I have nooooo idea.....


cheers

Frank

 

[chicano]

what to do

[root@storm:/var/log] tail -f /var/log/exim_mainlog
tail: /var/log/exim_mainlog: No such file or directory

 

[chirpy]

Seems like exim isn't installed and so has nothing at all to do with this thread.

Try the steps in this post:
http://forums.cpanel.net/showpost.php?p=189442&postcount=2

 

[chicano]

Seems like exim isn't installed and so has nothing at all to do with this thread.

Try the steps in this post:
http://forums.cpanel.net/showpost.php?p=189442&postcount=2

exim started ok
[root@storm:/var/log] tail -f /var/log/exim_mainlog
tail: /var/log/exim_mainlog: No such file or directory
[root@storm:/var/log] tail -f /var/log/exim_mainlog
tail: /var/log/exim_mainlog: No such file or directory
[root@storm:/var/log]

 

[chirpy]

What OS are you running?

 

[chicano]

FreeBSD 4.* STABLE

 

[chirpy]

Then your log files for exim are in /var/log/exim/mainlog You only had to have an actual look in the /var/log directory tree to find them.

 

[chicano]

[root@storm:/var/log] tail -f /var/log/exim/mainlog
2005-06-18 12:57:42 1DjUpI-0007Zu-1l Message is frozen
2005-06-18 12:57:42 End queue run: pid=30968
2005-06-18 12:59:22 1DjVQQ-00084U-6J <= [email protected] U=admin P=local S=713 [email protected]
2005-06-18 12:59:22 1DjVQQ-00084U-6J lowest numbered MX record points to local host: goldenshells.com
2005-06-18 12:59:22 1DjVQQ-00084U-6J == [email protected] R=lookuphost defer (-1): lowest numbered MX record points to local host
2005-06-18 12:59:22 1DjVQQ-00084U-6J Frozen
2005-06-18 13:03:38 1DjVUY-00086E-Bo <= [email protected] U=admin P=local S=721 [email protected]
2005-06-18 13:03:38 1DjVUY-00086E-Bo lowest numbered MX record points to local host: goldenshells.com
2005-06-18 13:03:38 1DjVUY-00086E-Bo == [email protected] R=lookuphost defer (-1): lowest numbered MX record points to local host
2005-06-18 13:03:38 1DjVUY-00086E-Bo Frozen


please reply me ASAP

 

[ccccanada]

I just wanted to mention something about spamassassin for liquidcherry:

If you have the filtering system turned on that deletes all mail that has the spamheader marked as YES then you could loose all your email because of something that happens in spamassassin.

If you find that spamassassin all of a sudden marks all email as spam it has to do with the two following files

bayes_toks
bayes_seen

which reside in your domain root/.spamassassin folder

you will see that at least one of the files has grown in size to be more than 500 KB.

The way around the problem is to remove the two files and in the user_prefs file in the same directory add the following somewhere.

# Enable Bayes auto-learning
use_bayes 0
autolearn 0

This will stop spamassassin from ever deleting all your mail again.

Hope this helps.