POP Server Not Delivering Mail (Selective Accounts)

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davef8

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Feb 20, 2004
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On two of our latest DA installs clients are reporting they are unable to recieve email on some accounts using the POP mail server.

Both installs are running on top of Red Hat Enterprise Linux. The DA version is 1.23.2.

This issue seems bizzare as it is only effecting some accounts on the server NOT all of them. Usually if there is a POP server problem all accounts are effected.

What could be potential causes of this problem and where should we look for additional information?

Clients can succussfully view and send email using IMAP and the Squirrelmail interface.
 
Also please note we can successfully login to the POP server on the effected accounts but when we do login we do not see/receive any email messages.
 
If the users can log into their POP accounts, then it seems reasonable that there's nothing in those mailboxes. So checking mail delivery could be fruitful.

Send an email while tailing the /var/log/exim/rejectlog to see if the email is being rejected. If not, then try while tailing the /var/log/exim/mainlog to see what is happening.

You can run exim from the command line with a switch that will trace everything that happens to the mail; looking it up and trying it out may be fruitful.

Also verify that the email isn't found with pop3, and imap (if the user doesn't care to set up an imap client just use squirrelmail instead...

http://www.example.com/squirrelmail

will run squirrelmail, which is an imap client).

Jeff
 
When we send test messages to these accounts the mail successfully appears when checked through IMAP. When checked through POP it always shows 0 messages.

I will tail the log files you suggested and post the results here.
 
If IMAP is seeing the messages and POP isn't, then I don't think the logs are going to show you anything.

Do you try POP before IMAP? Some people have reported problems seeing mail with POP after looking at it with IMAP. I've never been able to replicate the problem but it has been recorded.

Your next step would probably be to actually check the folders and see if the email is still in the inbox file (if IMAP has moved it to it's own directory structure then POP will NOT find it).

Jeff
 
Jeff,

Yes that is exactly what we did. We checked the email first usting IMAP, so we could move the mail from one server to the other easily. Then once all the mail was moved we gave the client access and they could no longer get to their messages via POP. How can we fix this directory structure problem?

We used to do this all the time and never had a problem until our last two install of DA.
 
We were able to solve this issue for one of the accounts by deleting the existing account, creating a new account, checking that new account via POP first, then logging in via IMAP to move all the messages back. This fixed the problem for one account on one of the effected servers.

On the other server this same sequence of steps had no effect. We can still access the account via IMAP and POP, but new mail is only accessible via IMAP not POP. We have tried deleting and re-creating the account many times and nothing seems to work. We removed the POP server rpm -e da_vm-pop3d and then re-installed but that had no effect either.

The exim logs are not showing anything out of the ordinary. We can't seem to find any logs for the POP server.

Any ideas?
 
Hello,

Try the following:
Code: 
wget http://files.directadmin.com/services/da_vm-pop3d-1.1.7f.tar.gz
tar xvzf da_vm-pop3d-1.1.7f.tar.gz
cd da_vm-pop3d-1.1.7f
./configure --prefix=/usr
make
make install
Then restart vm-pop3d, either using
service vm-pop3d restart
or through DA.

John
 
One account on one of the servers, still cannot recieve email. All other accounts on the that same server work correctly.

We deleted and added this account many times. Each time we delate and re-add the account we make sure to check it via POP right away. That way IMAP will not alter the proper directory structure needed for POP. Despite these efforts this one account still will not recieve mail via POP.

The exim "mainlog" does not show anything when we attempt to connect to this account.

Is it possible some files/folders related to this account have become corrupted? If so were can we look?
 
If there's nothing in /var/log/exim/mainlog than quite simply the email isn't reaching the server.

And no one can trace this for you unless you tell us your IP# and domain name.

Jeff
 
In an effort to get to the bottom of this I started with a fresh POP account on the DA server causing problems. I then opened up two SSH windows. The first window was tailing the "mainlog" and the second window was tailing the "rejectlog".

The first test message I sent was from the new account I created on the DA server using Outlook's test message function. I saw the email get successfully delivered in my "mainlog" terminal window and then sure enough it arrived in my POP inbox.

The second series of test messages I sent was from my main server running WHM/Cpanel. Any mail sent through any of the domains on this server did not get recieved. The mail was not recieved and absolutely nothing showed up in either of the log files I was tailing. This seems completely bizarre as I send email successfully using these accounts all day. The fact that nothing showed up in the log files would indicate the messages are not reaching the DA box.

The third series of messages I sent was from my Yahoo account and all of them were successfully received.

Any ideas on further troubleshooting this?
 
What's the domain name you're sending to on the new server?

Does it exist on the old CPanel server? Did it ever?

Your symptoms are such that I'd bet the CPanel server thinks it's responsible for the email and is delivering (or attempting to deliver it) locally.

Jeff
 
i got a private message from davef8, so I decided to offer this here...

In any event, I have no way to help you further as the problem is obviously NOT with your DA server; it can get email anywhere but from your CPanel server.

You'll have to look for the problem in the CPanel server's mail logs; the DA server logs proves that the CPanel server isn't even contacting it.

Jeff
 
Thanks for the assistance. The client's problem is solved for now. I will continue investigating this from the Cpanel server side.
 
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