Topic: SME 6.01 Outgoing Email problem

[AndyCocker]

Hi,

I appear to be having a problem with outgoing emails from my SME 6.01 server only box. The symptoms:

Webmail. I receive mail fine. When I try to reply, and click Send Message, the window goes white, as though it's not refreshing, and just sits there. I use horde at my (totally seperate) ISP, and know that this window should self close. Obviously, the mail does not get sent. In the mail log, I get the following:

Mail Log File Analysis
Report generated: Fri 13 May 2005 05:50:33 PM GMT

Reasons for failure

One line per reason for delivery failure. Information on each line:
* del is the number of deliveries that ended for this reason.
* xdelay is the total xdelay on those deliveries.

del  xdelay  reason
  1   17.01  205.158.62.23 does not like recipient./Remote host said: 550
<email@email.com>: Account Deactivated/Giving up on 205.158.62.23./

End of Report
I have not altered this bit <email@email.com>: for the purposes of this post. That's what it says. Is this the cause perhaps?
[/list]

In phpBB2, when I try to send mail, I get this:

Could not connect to smtp host : 2 : No such file or directory

DEBUG MODE

Line : 111
File : smtp.php

If I send through my ISP's SMTP, then the email goes out OK.[/list]

In Mambo, using

PHP Mail Function, it works OK. Changing this to SMTP Server fails![/list]

Other info which may or may not be relevant:

I am running both SpamAssasin and Clam AV, but have disabled both and the problem persists.
I am on a Static IP with DNS at my domain name hosting company pointing my ANAME and MX records at my IP.

Also, I've recently upgraded my PHP to 4.3.11 using the script here http://forums.contribs.org/index.php?topic=26751.0

Any ideas guys?

Andy Cocker

[CharlieBrady]

I appear to be having a problem with outgoing emails from my SME 6.01 server only box. The symptoms:

Webmail. I receive mail fine. When I try to reply, and click Send Message, the window goes white, as though it's not refreshing, and just sits there. I use horde at my (totally seperate) ISP, and know that this window should self close.
...
Also, I've recently upgraded my PHP to 4.3.11 using the script here

http://forums.contribs.org/index.php?topic=26751.0

Your message isn't making it into the qmail queue, so there will be nothing in the mail log analysis. The PHP upgrade has probably broken mail sending - it did for someone else here. Check /var/log/messages - and consider going back to standard PHP.

Have you confirmed that standard mail clients can send mail?
If so it's definitely not an outgoing email problem, but a webmail one.

[raem]

Andy

Please give us some feedback re this.
Was the php upgrade the reason for your email problem ?
Thanks

[AndyCocker]

Your message isn't making it into the qmail queue, so there will be nothing in the mail log analysis. The PHP upgrade has probably broken mail sending - it did for someone else here. Check /var/log/messages - and consider going back to standard PHP.

I'll check this when I get back to the office on Monday. I am willing to go back to standard PHP if that will fix things (I upgraded as I needed to run DocMan within Mambo CMS), but I don't know how to reverse the installation script.

Have you confirmed that standard mail clients can send mail?
If so it's definitely not an outgoing email problem, but a webmail one.

I have no standard mail clients using mail. I'm just serving a website, and using only webmail. The only mail I can get to leave the box is going from phpBB through my ISP's SMTP, and from Mambo CMS using PHP setting. I'm sure that I tried setting SME to use my ISP's SMTP, but that didn't work, because, as you say, things aren't actually getting into the queue.

Please give us some feedback re this.
Was the php upgrade the reason for your email problem ?

It looks that way Ray, but I can't be certain, as I simply hadn't tried to send out any webmail since I initially set up the server (when it definitely worked).

I was afraid that something would mess up as things have gone pretty smoothly so far, but my website's not really gone 'live' yet, and I could start from scratch and reinstall again. However, that wouldn't really help me learn how to fix things, so if I have to roll back PHP, I'd like to know how to go about it.

Thanks guys.

Andy Cocker

[raem]

Andy

> ...so if I have to roll back PHP, I'd like to know how to go about it.

I don't know what version you had installed previously or what version sme & other related contribs/rpms you have installed so these comments are general.

View the update script you last used and basically follow the reverse order of things using
rpm -e packagename (without numbers)
to uninstall newer or unwanted packages.

Where you would be going back to an earlier version of php then follow (manually) the earlier update scripts here
http://mirror.contribs.org/smeserver/contribs/ergozd/scripts/

You would use something like
rpm -Uvh -oldpackage php-4.3.10-3eo.i386.rpm
to replace the newer php with the older php, depending on which version you are going back to.
Same for other rpms you would be "downgrading" as required in the script.

As a guide I have
php-4.3.10-1db_rh73
installed and all mail systems work OK.

When you want to upgrade a live system, it's better to try a practice run on a test server to see if anything breaks. That way you don't get into problems with the production box ie you solve any problems first on the test server.

php upgrades are non standard upgrades and you do them at your own risk. While ergozd scripts appear to be good, the upgrade can't be guaranteed to work on every server, for various reasons.

[ergozd]

Hi Andy!

Make sure you have pear modules Mail, Net_Socket and Net_SMTP installed.

To check whether or not you have them installed
# pear list

If you don't see above mentioned pear modules install them with
# pear install Mail
# pear install Net_Socket
# pear install Net_SMTP

Hope it helps. Good luck.

[CharlieBrady]

Hi Andy!

Make sure you have pear modules Mail, Net_Socket and Net_SMTP installed.

To check whether or not you have them installed
# pear list

If you don't see above mentioned pear modules install them with
# pear install Mail
# pear install Net_Socket
# pear install Net_SMTP

Ergin, since those modules are needed for webmail, how about you include them in your php RPMs? Otherwise I'm sure people will continue to have problems.

[ergozd]

UPDATE: 2005-05-15 Now new RPMS incl pear modules are complied, upgrade-script is updated, hopefully this won't be an issue in future version.

------------------

Hi Charlie!

I'll do that...

For those who wonder why these pear modules were not in the RPMS, I did a quick check just now, for some reasons only these three (3) packages were included in the original php source file
HTML_Template_IT-1.1.tar  
Net_UserAgent_Detect-2.0.1.tar  
XML_RPC-1.2.2.tar

following packeages weren't included at all
DB-1.6.2.tar              
HTTP-1.2.2.tar      
Net_Socket-1.0.1.tar            
Mail-1.1.3.tar      
Net_SMTP-1.2.6.tar  
XML_Parser-1.0.1.tar

[AndyCocker]

Make sure you have pear modules Mail, Net_Socket and Net_SMTP installed.

To check whether or not you have them installed
# pear list

If you don't see above mentioned pear modules install them with
# pear install Mail
# pear install Net_Socket
# pear install Net_SMTP

Hope it helps. Good luck.

Hi Ergin,

I checked, and of those 3 I only had Mail installed. I did as you suggested above, and allwent well.

Now when I try to send mail I no longer get the window  'hanging', instead I get, at the top of the webmail window, the message There was an error sending your message: unable to add recipient [andy@myemailaddress]: Invalid response code received from server (I've replaced the real email address here).

FYI, these are the packages I have installed when I do pear list

Installed packages:
===================
Package              Version State

Archive_Tar          1.1     stable
Console_Getopt       1.2     stable
DB                   1.7.6   stable
Date                 1.4.3   stable
HTML_Template_IT     1.1     stable
Log                  1.8.7   stable
Mail                 1.1.4   stable
Net_SMTP             1.2.6   stable
Net_Socket           1.0.6   stable
Net_UserAgent_Detect 2.0.1   stable
PEAR                 1.3.5   stable
XML_RPC              1.2.2   stable



Any further ideas?

Andy Cocker

[ergozd]

Hi Andy!

I am not sure if is really is an Horde/IMP problem... The message is from your mail server.

Can you check if you can send an e-mail to same adress via PINE?

[AndyCocker]

Hi Andy!

I am not sure if is really is an Horde/IMP problem... The message is from your mail server.

Can you check if you can send an e-mail to same adress via PINE?

Hi Ergin,

Thanks for the quick response. In PINE I get [Mail not sent: postmaster@localhost]
Tried a couple of times with different addresses (which I know are good)

Andy Cocker

[ergozd]

Hi Ergin,

Thanks for the quick response. In PINE I get [Mail not sent: postmaster@localhost]
Tried a couple of times with different addresses (which I know are good)

Andy Cocker

It looks like you have some troubleshooting to do with your mail server.

Check for error messages in
# /var/log/maillog
# /var/log/qmail/current
# /var/log/imap/current

[AndyCocker]

Hi guys,

I'd like to thank you for trying to help me with my mail problem. Unfortunately I took the easy way out, and did a full reinstall from scratch. I was able to correct some errors I had made during my first install, and now have a fully working server again. I think I'll stick with stock PHP for now .

Actually, I'm not sure if that was the problem, as I tested webmail at every step of my reinstallation. It worked immediately after 6.01 installation (as one would expect), but failed after my next step, which was to install SpamAsassin, and add a few URL's to the block list. Got it working again by only adding 1 URL, and have left it at that for now until I have more time to troubleshoot.

Maybe this was the problem all along. I never even thought to check it out!

Andy Cocker

[neilh]

Hi Andy,

I have just had a similar problem, [Mail not sent: postmaster@localhost] after adding all the RBL URLs, I then removed them again all was ok,


Neil

[raem]

You might want to read the latest RBL HOWTO re recommendations for RBL lists. Jesper should update his panel information.
Note if you use the Spam Filter panel you don't need to follow the steps in the HOWTO though.

These lists caused some problems so don't use them.
ipwhois.rfc-ignorant.org
contacts.abuse.net

http://mirror.contribs.org/smeserver/contribs/rmitchell/smeserver/howto/Spam%20blocking%20HOWTO%20using%20smtpfront-qmail%20for%20sme%20server.htm