Broken Email Notifications - updates + poll

[Marked 197]

Hi all,

 

I'm just letting everyone know that email notifications have been down for the past 2 months and I'm currently looking into the solution.

 

In the meantime, please vote in the poll. I would like some feedback to see how important the email notifications are to the community. I've been thinking about creating a template, such as having the websites logo at the top and a color scheme, instead of the generic pure text emails that currently gets sent.

[Polraudio 122]

I use it every day at work when it was working. It was great to check my email to see if someone sent me a PM or replied to my post without loading up the site and risk getting caught at work.

 

I could live without it, its just something thats nice to have when your at work.

[Calvinchun 3]

Yeah i agreed with polraudio... Me too think about that. And marked i agreed with your ideas...

[Marked 197]

I've changed the name servers over which takes up to 24 hours... fingers crossed this works. I believe that when I stopped using a cloud service, the emails stopped working, because GDU is currently using the same service and emails send just fine on that domain using this same forum. The reason I think this will solve it is because I would have changed the GDU nameservers shortly after I registered the domain, the same time those emails stopped working, and therefore probably the same time I took RMXPU off the service.

[Bigace360 38]

MSN would alert me whenever I get the notifaction from this site. Now I have to refresh this site to see if I get a message which is kind of annoying if I'm waiting for a reply and have no clue if the person sent it or not with out refreshing.

[Bob423 52]

i wait for my phone to make that little chime, when im not on my computer, it usually means i have an email, and right now im only getting them from youtube, which is cool, but i miss knowing what people are saying without having to wait till i get home or something.

[Heretic86 25]

Microsoft Windows XP [Version 5.1.2600]

© Copyright 1985-2001 Microsoft Corp.

C:\Documents and Settings\Me>nslookup

Default Server: a2.9b.354a.static.theplanet.com

Address: 74.53.155.162

> set type=mx

> rmxpunlimited.net

Server: a2.9b.354a.static.theplanet.com

Address: 74.53.155.162

Non-authoritative answer:

rmxpunlimited.net MX preference = 20, mail exchanger = mx1.servage.net

rmxpunlimited.net MX preference = 20, mail exchanger = mx2.servage.net

rmxpunlimited.net MX preference = 1, mail exchanger = fmx-low.servage.net

rmxpunlimited.net MX preference = 999, mail exchanger = fmx-high.servage.n

et

> mail.rmxpunlimited.net

Server: a2.9b.354a.static.theplanet.com

Address: 74.53.155.162

*** No mail exchange (MX) records available for mail.rmxpunlimited.net

> mx1.servage.net

Server: a2.9b.354a.static.theplanet.com

Address: 74.53.155.162

*** No mail exchange (MX) records available for mx1.servage.net

>

 

NSLOOKUP is your best friend!

 

Get used to trying different servers from the DOS Prompt, type nslookup, which puts you in the nslookup command. Then get used to things like "server 208.67.220.220" (or 222.222, OpenDNS servers) "set type=a" for A Records, "set type=mx" for mx records and so on. The ip of the mail source should have a reverse lookup which matches the A record if possible, which also has a MX record. If it doesnt, sites like Yahoo have been kicking mail for a while now. But lets see if your current DNS changes fix these issues once they propogate.

 

Or if you have access to telnet on the server, you can try to telnet to one of Yahoo's mail exchangers and throw some test mail commands to it, just to see what kind of error messages you get if any.

 

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/153119

 

If you cant telnet, you can use PHP to do the same thing, which sounds like you probably know how to do already. PHP will also return those same mail error codes. Just need to find out why certain mail services arent working, should the problem continue.

 

If not, I'll survive.

[Marked 197]

I don't have time to read up on all this stuff... the DNS lookup basically tells me what's currently there, right? I know how to add MX, A records, etc. But I don't really know what I have to add or why it won't work.

 

I'm using a simple php mail() function to test if that basic function works (and thats what IPB uses). It works just fine on gdunlimited.net but not rmxpunlimited.net, and there should be no difference...

 

Could there be a lag in the record changes in the domain? I'm not sure what to do from here. I also have no access to the host but I don't think that should matter.

[Heretic86 25]

Ok, digging deeper, Im trying to make sure your forward and reverse lookups are the same, and have correct mx records. Some of these things might be beyond your control, especially since we dont own the hosts domain name.

 

What else I've found:

 

Forward Lookup on www.rmxpunlimited.net goes to 199.27.134.32

but the Reverse Lookup on that IP goes to cloudflare.com apparently is using Google Mail services

 

This would probably be a good time to actually contact the website host.

 

As far as php mail(), it should record errors sent back from the mail server. Probably need a simple scriptlet to test it out

if !mail(args) var_dump(), I dont remember off the top of my head to get the errors back from the mail server, but I know it can be done becasue I've done it. If I still was at my previous job, I'd just offer to host the site or mail services for you.

[Marked 197]

I actually just changed the namer servers to the cloudflare name servers yesterday in an attempt to get this working but when I took the site off of cloudflare, this problem started showing up.

 

My gdunlimited.net domain also uses cloudflare. As I said above, I've been trying to make the two identical to isolate the problem. I have no idea what the forward and backward lookups are, so I guess I'll try and get the errors in PHP.

 

Can I do anything with this? This is an email sent by the forum

Delivered-To: kony2012@gmail.com
Received: by 10.152.36.103 with SMTP id p7cs238008laj;
    Fri, 9 Dec 2011 10:00:21 -0800 (PST)
Received: from mr.google.com ([10.236.175.65])
    by 10.236.175.65 with SMTP id y41mr15496513yhl.26.1323453621024 (num_hops = 1);
    Fri, 09 Dec 2011 10:00:21 -0800 (PST)
Received: from mr.google.com ([10.236.175.65])
    by 10.236.175.65 with SMTP id y41mr15496513yhl.26.1323453618767 (num_hops = 1);
    Fri, 09 Dec 2011 10:00:18 -0800 (PST)
Received: by 10.236.175.65 with SMTP id y41mr12200154yhl.26.1323453618754;
    Fri, 09 Dec 2011 10:00:18 -0800 (PST)
X-Forwarded-To: mckitterick.mark@gmail.com
X-Forwarded-For: marked13@gmail.com mckitterick.mark@gmail.com
Delivered-To: marked13@gmail.com
Received: by 10.100.243.28 with SMTP id q28cs9719anh;
    Fri, 9 Dec 2011 10:00:18 -0800 (PST)
Received: by 10.52.27.78 with SMTP id r14mr5095926vdg.97.1323453616174;
    Fri, 09 Dec 2011 10:00:16 -0800 (PST)
Return-Path: <admin@rmxpunlimited.com>
Received: from c44.servage.net (c44.servage.net. [77.232.92.23])
    by mx.google.com with ESMTP id k19si1783329vcq.130.2011.12.09.10.00.15;
    Fri, 09 Dec 2011 10:00:15 -0800 (PST)
Received-SPF: neutral (google.com: 77.232.92.23 is neither permitted nor denied by best guess record for domain of admin@rmxpunlimited.com) client-ip=77.232.92.23;
Authentication-Results: mx.google.com; spf=neutral (google.com: 77.232.92.23 is neither permitted nor denied by best guess record for domain of admin@rmxpunlimited.com) smtp.mail=admin@rmxpunlimited.com
Received: from cluster.servage-coustomer.net (node5.c44 [10.4.44.5])
by c44.servage.net (Postfix) with SMTP id 09BC424C31
for <marked13@gmail.com>; Fri,  9 Dec 2011 18:00:05 +0000 (UTC)
From: "RMXP Unlimited" <admin@rmxpunlimited.com>
X-ServageMailTag: TUM0NzgwNFRWNDQ5Njk2U2ExLjA2U1RQSFAK
To: marked13@gmail.com
Subject: Kiriashi has replied to a personal conversation
MIME-Version: 1.0
Date: Fri, 09 Dec 2011 18:00:04 +0000
X-Priority: 3
X-Mailer: IPS PHP Mailer
Message-ID: <a3206f74274fc63ccd475c15f4feeef2@www.rmxpunlimited.net>
Content-type: text/plain; charset="ISO-8859-1"
Marked,
Kiriashi has replied to a personal conversation entitled "Ohaiiii".
Kiriashi said:
======================================================================
Oh crap. I feel like a total jerk. I completely forget. :< And my "break" isn't necessarily because I wanted a vacation from rmxpu, I just have had a lot of crap going on so I had to, so that's a shame. But oh well.
I will get it as soon as possible. What was the link again?
======================================================================
PLEASE DO NOT REPLY DIRECTLY TO THIS EMAIL!
You can reply to this personal conversation by following the link below:
http://www.rmxpunlimited.net/forums/index.php?app=members&module=messaging&section=view&do=findMessage&topicID=28448&msgID=__firstUnread__

[Heretic86 25]

Comparing the two...

 

Non-authoritative answer:

gdunlimited.net MX preference = 20, mail exchanger = mx2.servage.net

gdunlimited.net MX preference = 10, mail exchanger = mx1.servage.net

> rmxpunlimited.net

Server: resolver1.opendns.com

Address: 208.67.222.222

Non-authoritative answer:

rmxpunlimited.net MX preference = 20, mail exchanger = mx2.servage.net

rmxpunlimited.net MX preference = 1, mail exchanger = fmx-low.servage.net

rmxpunlimited.net MX preference = 20, mail exchanger = mx1.servage.net

rmxpunlimited.net MX preference = 999, mail exchanger = fmx-high.servage.net

>

 

It could possibly be fmx-low.servage.net. The Preference of 1 means it is the first MX expected to respond. Thinking to remove the MX Records for fmx-low.servage.net and fmx-high.servage.net so there are two mail exchangers left, mx2.servage.net and mx1.servage.net. GDUnlimited appears to only have the two mail records, and both of those are the mx's for gdunlimited.

 

The other thing I can possibly think of is to use an Alias instead of an A Record. Like make mail.rmxpunlimited.net an Alias of gdunlimited.net if gdunlimited.net is working. That is to flat out delete the A record for mail, and create a New Alias for mail, and set the Alias mail to point to mail.gdunlimited.net.

 

Ok, so in general, right now

 

mail.rmxpunlimited.net is an A record, points to 77.232.92.29

mail.gdunlimited.net is an A record, points to 77.232.92.29

 

I'd drop the two extra MX records for rmxpunlimited.net, so youre left with mx1 and mx2.servage.net

 

If that doesnt work, drop mail.rmxpunlimited.net as an A record, create a new Alias called mail, and make it an alias of mail.gdunlimited.net since that will be the new primary domain. Alias may work better because it is the same IP for the mail A Record, and alias allows both domains to operate with credentials from one. Been a while since I've had to do this, but it is coming back slowly...

 

Out of curiousity, what was the reason for fxm-low and fxm-high MX records?

 

and for the record, 24 hours to propgate dns changes is a bunch of hooey.

Edited March 18, 2012 by Heretic86

[Marked 197]

Cloudflare added those extra mx records itself >.> And oddly enough it didn't add them for gdunlimited.. whats up with that? There must some settings somewhere that I can't control coz these things just keep getting added in for me D:

 

I deleted them, and i think ive done the alias properly. The following is the ONLY DNS records (apart from NS Records) that are added in this CP, which is the main account:

 

no luck with the emails yet though. :/

 

And this is my cloudflare DNS settings

[Heretic86 25]

I believe those settings should work. They all appear to be spot on. Only other thing that I could say, which I dont think is a big deal is MX record priorities. Usually the most important one is listed with a priority of 10, followed by increments of 10, so mx1 priority 10, mx2 p 20, mx3 30, so on and so forth. I think that is done so the introduction of new mail servers can be put in without having to update or change the current mx's in any way, and numbers can be scaled down after propogation.

 

Is anything different happening with the mail? Any success with $error = mail(args) var_dump($error) ?

[Marked 197]

Changing the priorities, same result :/

 

I googled around how to debug mail errors but with very little luck.

 

Using you're code however

rmxpunlimited.net

bool(false)

gdunlimited.net

bool(true)

 

So it was never at the domain level was it? Is now a bad time to mention that rmxpu uses php5.2.x and gdunlimited.net php 5.3? I never thought that would make a difference, especially since the emails used to work fine. However, we did change rmxpu to php5.3 and it screwed everything up so we changed it back php5.2.

[Heretic86 25]

Yeah, dont go back to 5.2, and stay away from 5.4 for the time being until they work out the new set of bugs in it. Stick with 5.3.

 

/agree

 

I'll have to do some homework for you when I get a chance and find out how to get detailed error messages back from the php mail class. 4 args is what I remember about mail(), and i think either headers is optional or another parameter for saving mail responses...

 

Oh, and you're not using >>PEAR::Mail_Mime right? Just good old php mail($to,$subject,$msg)?

[Marked 197]

Thanks :D you've already been a MASSIVE help.

 

We're currently on 5.2 coz 5.3 majorly messed with everything, which is very odd considering gdu is on 5.3. I don't have host access so I duno whats doing there.

 

Yup I'm just using the mail() function. IPB has the option of using SMTP but i dont know the values to set that up, i'd have to get them off isaac. It may be worth it to throw in the towel here and just wait until we switch domains which I could do in a few weeks when I go on holiday.

[Heretic86 25]

I havent been a huge help yet, it still isnt working.

 

Got it!

 

It is recorded, but error_reporting in php.ini is turned off. Usually done on live web sites. Fortunately, php allows you to control access to that on a per-script basis. So try this...

 

<?php

// Report all PHP errors (see changelog)

error_reporting(E_ALL);

 

mail(couple of test arguments)

?>

 

Put in a new non forum script that we wont see, and try running the mail() function and we can see what kind of error messages that we now know the mail server is responding with...

 

edit

 

Is the website using error_log to pump out a log file of errors? We can try to turn that on as well to see if we are getting different error messages from the server recorded as opposed to ones we get in a test.

Edited March 19, 2012 by Heretic86

[Marked 197]

I pretty much have access to the public_html folder of the site only, I can't get back behind there to access the rest, and there doesn't appear to any error log in public_html.

 

With

error_reporting(E_ALL);

I still get nothing.

 

But i think I've found something. Check out this topic http://stackoverflow...l-returns-false And search for

I just had the same problem. After a php upgrade, the mail function always returns false.

 

Comparing the two sendmail_path values..

rmxpu

 

gdu

 

So, we have a difference there and I've already send a PM to isaac to change it in php_ini (apparently this is the only place you can change it).

[Heretic86 25]

One of the really cool things about php on virtual servers is that even though it may be one literal machine with multiple IP's attached to it, php can run "virtual" ini files, so if they are set up right, you can have access to your whole own php.ini that only affects the files in that directory. I always thought that was awesome!

 

And after reading up a bit more, mail() can be overridden when calling mail by using mail($to, $subject, $msg, $HEADERS), so in the event that it is rejecting based on the email address in php.ini, you can override that with the $headers call \r\n and specify the reply to address.

 

Thinking more... Im stuck without an error msg, but I'll gather the mail server requires authentication before sending mail through it (IE not open for Relay?). Another groovy (yeah, who says that any more?) thing about php is even if you dont have access to a telnet client on the server, you can use php's fsockopen() command, which, IIRC is what all the mail functions are based around. fsockopen == telnet, if this one doesnt work try Pfscokopen() for a Persistent Connection. That bit me a couple of times. Connected, great, get info, great, send a command, connection disappeared. Anywho, fsockopen...

 

Example 1

 

<?php
$fp = fsockopen("[url="http://www.example.com"]www.example.com[/url]", 80, $errno, $errstr, 30);
if (!$fp) {
   echo "$errstr ($errno)<br />\n";
} else {
   $out = "GET / HTTP/1.1\r\n";
   $out .= "Host: [url="http://www.example.comrn"]www.example.com\r\n[/url]";
   $out .= "Connection: Close\r\n\r\n";
   fwrite($fp, $out);
   while (!feof($fp)) {
    echo fgets($fp, 128);
   }
   fclose($fp);
}
?>

 

Just change port 80 to 25 for the default mail port for this script test. It should at least say authentication required, but hey, a 550 will make me just as happy.

 

I really really wanna get the response from the mail server!

Edited March 20, 2012 by Heretic86

[Marked 197]

I don't quite understand your last post fully, but I'm pretty sure the best here is to pull the plug on solving this issue in the current circumstances (those being that we'll be changing shortly to a system I can confirm does send emails). I spent hours and hours on this already and I'm just too busy these days to give up anymore on something that's probably a longshot anyways.

 

Thanks again for your help!

[Jon Bon 43]

I'm pretty sure the best here is to pull the plug on solving this issue

 

Sounds good to me too.Good effort you two. At least it will be fixed when we swap over.

[Bob423 52]

aww... :(

i miss the email notifications.

guess i have to wait