WHM / cPanel Main Account Email Inbox Authentication

[markedwards]

Hi, apologies if this has already been addressed - I searched and didn't see anything.

We had a server running WHM and the disk array totally failed. So we had to rebuild the server from the ground up. It is now running WHM 11.42.1 on CentOS 6, and we restored all cPanel accounts from backup - no problems there in general. The way we did this is: We reinstalled CentOS, then installed cPanel as usual, then walked through the initial WHM config via Web over port 2807, and then after the basic WHM config was all done when proceeded to use the "restorepkg" script in a shell to restore all cPanel accounts -- including the account for the primary server domain.

The problem we have now is that the primary domain for the server has its own cPanel account of course, with two email inboxes, but no matter how many times we reset the email passwords (via cPanel ) on the inbox we can't login to check mail - there is always a message saying authentication failed.

Even if we drop into a shell on the server and "telnet localhost 110" and do the standard "user" and "pass" commands to login to the pop account if fails authentication. This is not the case with any other pop account for other cPanel accounts on the server -- those all work fine via desktop email software and via telnet to port 100. It's only the primary server domain where this occurs.

Any idea what is going on and how to fix it?

 

[cPanelMichael]

The problem we have now is that the primary domain for the server has its own cPanel account of course, with two email inboxes, but no matter how many times we reset the email passwords (via cPanel ) on the inbox we can't login to check mail - there is always a message saying authentication failed.

Hello

Please ensure the hostname of the server does not match a domain name that's added to an account. For instance, if your hostname is "server.domain.com", make sure there is no account or subdomain added to an existing account that uses "server.domain.com".

Thank you.

 

[markedwards]

The server hostname was oringally "x.domain.z" ( for sake of example here in the forum )

At some point during the new install config I changed it to simply "domain.z"

Then I visited the hostname page in WHM today and it said that it's important to use a name not used by any account. Doh! So I changed the hostname back to "x.domain.z" and wondered if that caused the pop inbox auth problems in the primary / first cPanel account that was ever added to the server, which has the same domain, e.g. "domain.z"

I then went back again and reset the inbox passwords for the 2 inboxes in the "domain.z" account via cPanel, waited a few mins, tried to login to pop again via telnet, still can't login to inboxes.

 

[markedwards]

Fixed via WHM/cPanel support. Thanks!

 

[cPanelMichael]

Fixed via WHM/cPanel support. Thanks!

I am happy to see the issue is now resolved. To update, it looks like the /etc/userdomains file was manually repaired to correct the previous issue where the hostname was added as a domain name to an account.

Thanks.