Is this forum going to last?
- Thread starter Santilli
- Start date
Tannin
Storage? I am Storage!
Woops, wrong forum Greg. This belongs in feedback. :-?
But, yes, Storage Forum has secure finances. It is here to stay. (In fact, this is not so much a matter of having high income as it is of having low expenses.)
But, yes, Storage Forum has secure finances. It is here to stay. (In fact, this is not so much a matter of having high income as it is of having low expenses.)
James
Storage is cool
Don't you have any messages in syslog that might help you? If you want me to have a poke around and see if I can fix it I'm happy to do so, although my experience is mostly Solaris and FreeBSD rather than Linux.
The problem is, this host is not mine, and I only have one account. I'm a little hesitant to give out my username and pw, for reasons, I hope you can understand. I take your comments as being genuine and helpful, so please don't take me the wrong way. Could I ask however, what, and where, should I be looking? I'm still new to Unix, and my permissions are limited. I've asked my friend to contact the admins at the hosting place regarding my problems.
Here is what I think is going on:
This forum sends unsolicited mail when a person signs up. The forum has 2 options for sending mail, one is by using the PHP sendmail, which in turn communicates with the SMTP server, and the second way is me providing the SMTP server address.
If I use my SMTP address I receive a message that says I can't send unsolicited mail. Here are the properties of mail sent from this forum at www.storageforum.net, to my ISP e-mail.
My guess is that my hosting provider is filtering the mail as spam, maybe even slowing it down because it is coming from "no one" as the message above indicates to me.
Here is what I think is going on:
This forum sends unsolicited mail when a person signs up. The forum has 2 options for sending mail, one is by using the PHP sendmail, which in turn communicates with the SMTP server, and the second way is me providing the SMTP server address.
If I use my SMTP address I receive a message that says I can't send unsolicited mail. Here are the properties of mail sent from this forum at www.storageforum.net, to my ISP e-mail.
My guess is that my hosting provider is filtering the mail as spam, maybe even slowing it down because it is coming from "no one" as the message above indicates to me.
Handruin said:
If it matter, the topic reply notification does the same thing: It takes hours. Matter of fact, it takes long enough that I can visit several times and then it sends several topic notifications on the same topic with no change in the topic.
James
Storage is cool
Doug, no problem. I don't know how your hosting is set up, so I don't know how your permissions are/aren't limited. Hence it's a bit hard to give advice at a distance.Handruin said:
less /var/log/syslog will give you a look at the admin log in Solaris anyway, that should tell you if things are dying on the box or not.
Mail is rather binary, ie. in most cases it will either send or not send, it won't "hold" a message for a time unless it can't contact the remote mail server.
Mail servers are generally set up to prevent relaying, ie. what you're trying to do - machines from outside their domain sending messages via their mail server. In that case though you usually get a straight denial.
If you have access to telnet, you can test this out directly (this is from memory, it might complain about syntax
):telnet ns1.townisp.com 25
Once you're connected :
ehlo reagan.hostnoc.net
mail from: nobody@reagan.hostnoc.net
rcpt to: dcahill@townisp.com
This is a bounce test
.
quit
You should see any errors that Postfix generates as you go along.
I don't think so. You can see in the mail headers you post above that there is a 7 1/2 hour delay between when the mail is sent to the time it is received by townisp.com. This indicates to me the problem is at hostnoc.net. The confusing thing is that it seems to go through an Exim box at Hostnoc (Exim is a "secure" replacement for Sendmail) which it shouldn't do if you're mailing directly from your site to twonisp.com's Postfix server.
Have you tried setting the SMTP server as reagan.hostnoc.net?
james said:Doug, no problem. I don't know how your hosting is set up, so I don't know how your permissions are/aren't limited. Hence it's a bit hard to give advice at a distance.Handruin said:
less /var/log/syslog will give you a look at the admin log in Solaris anyway, that should tell you if things are dying on the box or not.
Mail is rather binary, ie. in most cases it will either send or not send, it won't "hold" a message for a time unless it can't contact the remote mail server.
Mail servers are generally set up to prevent relaying, ie. what you're trying to do - machines from outside their domain sending messages via their mail server. In that case though you usually get a straight denial.
If you have access to telnet, you can test this out directly (this is from memory, it might complain about syntax
telnet ns1.townisp.com 25
Once you're connected :
ehlo reagan.hostnoc.net
mail from: nobody@reagan.hostnoc.net
rcpt to: dcahill@townisp.com
This is a bounce test
.
quit
You should see any errors that Postfix generates as you go along.
I don't think so. You can see in the mail headers you post above that there is a 7 1/2 hour delay between when the mail is sent to the time it is received by townisp.com. This indicates to me the problem is at hostnoc.net. The confusing thing is that it seems to go through an Exim box at Hostnoc (Exim is a "secure" replacement for Sendmail) which it shouldn't do if you're mailing directly from your site to twonisp.com's Postfix server.
Have you tried setting the SMTP server as reagan.hostnoc.net?
OK, I tried connecting to my hosts SMTP server by telnet as you mentioned and i received this right away:
Code:
220-reagan.hostnoc.net ESMTP Exim 3.34 #1 Tue, 29 Jan 2002 00:07:36 -0500
220-We do not authorize the use of this system to transport unsolicited,
220 and/or bulk e-mail.This message is the same thing I get when I try to use my SMTP setting in the forum. It offers 2 options for sending mail. First option is to use the forums default method which is not clearly defined, the second is to specify an SMTP server. When I enter in my SMTP setting i receive the same message when the forum tries to register a user.
What would make a mail server take so long to send a message? This happens when it sends activation to all of my e-mail addresses. My regular e-mail is very fast from this hosting service, unlike what is sent by the forum.
BTW, thank you for helping me out, I haven’t had too much luck so far and as you can tell, my experience is limited.
-Doug
Pradeep
Storage? I am Storage!
Ok, so you are trying to use your ISP's mail server thru an ip range outside your ISP's range. Sounds like a relaying problem like James mentioned.
In my case with pair.com hosting, it permits me to use their mail relay, but only for 15 mins after checking my mail on that account. This is reffered to as SMTP after POP or something like that. Because with SMTP your ISP cannot authenticate who you are, to them you could be anyone anywhere. Perhaps burst.net has a similar feature?
In my case with pair.com hosting, it permits me to use their mail relay, but only for 15 mins after checking my mail on that account. This is reffered to as SMTP after POP or something like that. Because with SMTP your ISP cannot authenticate who you are, to them you could be anyone anywhere. Perhaps burst.net has a similar feature?
Pradeep said:
It could be the case. I'm trying to use the e-mail that is provided with my hosting service. It seems as though it doesn't pass any type of credentials. If I could get it to send e-mails by way of logging in, then maybe that would work some how. But why is it that when i first set this forum up, the e-mails were fast as hell? I wonder how SR does it, don't they use pair.com? Maybe it's easier for them because they have their own servers?
Pradeep
Storage? I am Storage!
Sending email from the burst.net provided SMTP server should work without authentication, because the shared host you are using will be in bursts IP range. Is this the account you are having trouble with, or your ISP's SMTP server?
Pradeep
Storage? I am Storage!
X-AntiAbuse: Primary Hostname - reagan.hostnoc.net
X-AntiAbuse: Original Domain - townisp.com
X-AntiAbuse: Originator/Caller UID/GID - [99 99] / [0 0]
X-AntiAbuse: Sender Address Domain - reagan.hostnoc.net
Here it looks like you are sending from hostnoc.net (your burst.net account?) to your townisp.com domain (your ISP?). This is the problem and why it thinks you are a spammer.
X-AntiAbuse: Original Domain - townisp.com
X-AntiAbuse: Originator/Caller UID/GID - [99 99] / [0 0]
X-AntiAbuse: Sender Address Domain - reagan.hostnoc.net
Here it looks like you are sending from hostnoc.net (your burst.net account?) to your townisp.com domain (your ISP?). This is the problem and why it thinks you are a spammer.
Pradeep said:
I'm having trouble with my hosts e-mail. The only reason my ISP's e-mail is even listed is for an example. No matter which of my e-mail addresses I use whether it's www.onebox.com www.angelfire.com, they all take a really long time.
I figured the same thing, my host has a dedicated IP address, it's not even DHCP, and it reports a message saying unsolicited mail is not allowed. Maybe they have software which slows down mass mailing. Mark also made me think of something when he mentioned that the e-mails he receives when a post is replied to are slow. I don't know how many users are doing this, but if many are, this would generate a decent amount of traffic which is possibly flagged by my hosting service as spam.
I could also be talking out of my butt, as I'm not sure about any of this. :-?
Usually, outgoing mail is not considered spam until someone complains and then you will be notified about the complaint so you can respond.
Much more likely, your ISP could be collecting Email and only sending it out on a schedule or when a certain volume has been collected.
Much more likely, your ISP could be collecting Email and only sending it out on a schedule or when a certain volume has been collected.
Mercutio
Fatwah on Western Digital
Are you certain you're using the right mail gateway for your box?
What happens if you shell in to your box (via ssh or telnet or whatever) and use elm or pine to send yourself a message? Same delay?
What happens if you shell in to your box (via ssh or telnet or whatever) and use elm or pine to send yourself a message? Same delay?
Mercutio
Fatwah on Western Digital
We have a message from a real user on Handruin's host (webmaster@storageforum), being delivered to a valid user on Handruin's personal ISP (dcahill@townisp). There are no other recipients, the mail has not been set to priority "bulk" or "Urgent" (two things that frequently tag mail as spam). Finally we see that the mail message picked up a number of "X" (user defined) headers somewhere along the way. I'm fairly certain that mesages are being sent out one-at-a-time - we're not so popular here that multiples of message might be sent out in some very short period.
There's really nothing here I can see that would trigger spamblocking software on either end. Unsolicited or not, this is legitimate e-mail and even a pretty brain-deal mail-processor should see that. Besides, the mail is ultimately going through (which also discounts theories of authentication problems).
Have you said anything to your hosting company about this yet?
There's really nothing here I can see that would trigger spamblocking software on either end. Unsolicited or not, this is legitimate e-mail and even a pretty brain-deal mail-processor should see that. Besides, the mail is ultimately going through (which also discounts theories of authentication problems).
Have you said anything to your hosting company about this yet?
James
Storage is cool
Because the amount of time between when a mail is sent and when it is received varies, my conclusion is that Burst.Net may be overburdened, either legitimately or because of a DOS attack.
Doug, can you ask Burst.Net what machine you should use for outgoing mail, and whether the behaviour you are experiencing is normal?
BTW I can point you at a couple of mail relays you can temporarily use - however both require authentication before you're allowed to send, and I don't know whether phpBB handles this or not. If it can, drop me a mail.
Doug, can you ask Burst.Net what machine you should use for outgoing mail, and whether the behaviour you are experiencing is normal?
BTW I can point you at a couple of mail relays you can temporarily use - however both require authentication before you're allowed to send, and I don't know whether phpBB handles this or not. If it can, drop me a mail.
I can't remember who it was here that gave me the idea, but i tried another test. I signed up a new user on the area51 board within seconds of checking my pop3 mail to initiate login so that the forum could send a mail message and it seemed to work. I received the confirmation in seconds at an off-site e-mail address.
Although this is not a solution, it helps me figure this out a bit. I need to test with it a bit more to see if this is really the case. I really don't believe the e-mail server is overburdened, but I guess it can happen. Some people don't even receive their confirmations, which bothers me.
James, I will try to find out what the name is, thank you for the idea and all the other ideas everyone has written to me with. The problem is, I write to the reseller who then writes to burst for support.
Although this is not a solution, it helps me figure this out a bit. I need to test with it a bit more to see if this is really the case. I really don't believe the e-mail server is overburdened, but I guess it can happen. Some people don't even receive their confirmations, which bothers me.
James, I will try to find out what the name is, thank you for the idea and all the other ideas everyone has written to me with. The problem is, I write to the reseller who then writes to burst for support.
James
Storage is cool
Doug, could you switch your account to being directly with Burst.Net?
I see they have a "Mega Linux" plan for $29.95/month which seems to meet your current requirements.
It might make support less painful...
I see they have a "Mega Linux" plan for $29.95/month which seems to meet your current requirements.
It might make support less painful...
James said:
That is exactly the plan I have right now, but I pay $21 per month. I've paid for the year so I don't think I can do anything at this point. I'm trying to work things out right now, and I appreciate the help from you and everyone else...I just hope people will understand for the time being as I work out the bugs. I think my problem is, I need to understand more before I can go ask them what to look into. All the items in this thread have helped me tremendously. the speed seems to be pretty good at burst, then again we only have 48 users, a few of which have duplicate names.
I'll post what I find out, as maybe you or some one else will have further insight as to their response.
Adcadet
Storage Freak
I think we'll all agree that the majority of the costs should not be placed upon Doug (Handruin, our savior).
James
Storage is cool
Yes, hence I was hoping a higher level of interest in the mail @storageforum.net option so as to defray Doug's costs. (I'd just go ahead and build it, but I need Doug's agreement on the DNS stuff, see the other thread.)
Doug, it's 29.95 per month or 299.50 per year at Burstnet. That works out to $24.95 per month which isn't too severe an increase from what you're paying now. What's the exit clause in your contract?
As far as the mail is concerned, I suspect that the solution is not that you need to log in first before it will send, because otherwise it would refuse the mail outright from the beginning.
I mentioned DOS attacks on mail servers because the same thing was happening at ZoneEdit, even though they're huge (check their network map). They're on top of it now but it did cause delays of up to 22 hours for some mail, while others went straight through. That sorta sounded to me like your problem.
I think the important thing would be to send Burst.Net (via your reseller if necessary) the mail header you posted and ask them if they can help or provide an explanation.
I'd offer to host you somewhere in the newly enlarged C&W/Digital Island/Exodus conglomerate but (a) in a big company it's actually pretty hard to appropriate resources unless you directly run one of the datacentres (which I don't) and (b) we don't actually seem to offer a shared low end Linux box, just dedicated great big Sun boxes and multiple CPU Win2K servers. I'll have a look around though, but I don't have any info on Exodus's stuff yet. The minimum spec for one of our data centres is multiple OC192s (9.6Gb/s!) so they're a pretty good place to be if I can arrange it.
I also have a friend who runs a small hosting centre and perhaps he can help.
I don't want to take any of this away from you, just find a location for you where you have more direct control and whose infrastructure is better understood so I can help you more effectively.
Doug, it's 29.95 per month or 299.50 per year at Burstnet. That works out to $24.95 per month which isn't too severe an increase from what you're paying now. What's the exit clause in your contract?
As far as the mail is concerned, I suspect that the solution is not that you need to log in first before it will send, because otherwise it would refuse the mail outright from the beginning.
I mentioned DOS attacks on mail servers because the same thing was happening at ZoneEdit, even though they're huge (check their network map). They're on top of it now but it did cause delays of up to 22 hours for some mail, while others went straight through. That sorta sounded to me like your problem.
I think the important thing would be to send Burst.Net (via your reseller if necessary) the mail header you posted and ask them if they can help or provide an explanation.
I'd offer to host you somewhere in the newly enlarged C&W/Digital Island/Exodus conglomerate but (a) in a big company it's actually pretty hard to appropriate resources unless you directly run one of the datacentres (which I don't) and (b) we don't actually seem to offer a shared low end Linux box, just dedicated great big Sun boxes and multiple CPU Win2K servers. I'll have a look around though, but I don't have any info on Exodus's stuff yet. The minimum spec for one of our data centres is multiple OC192s (9.6Gb/s!) so they're a pretty good place to be if I can arrange it.
I also have a friend who runs a small hosting centre and perhaps he can help.
I don't want to take any of this away from you, just find a location for you where you have more direct control and whose infrastructure is better understood so I can help you more effectively.