Weird webmail problem

[nobaloney]

One of our clients is having a weird webmail problem.

Neither squirrelmail nor webmail (uebimiau) can download certain messages in an inbox (in fact in several inboxes, but we're concentrating on one until we figure out the problem.

Many of the problematic emails are from eBay, but others from other senders cause the problem as well.

The webmail client just locks up when one of the problematic emails is attempted (by clicking on it to get it to display). In the case of Squirrelmail we sometimes see this as part of the error:

Query: FETCH 22 BODY[2]

In uebimiau we don't see anything, and sometimes we don't see anything in Squirrelmail.

The server is running CentOS 3.7

The same mailbox has no problems when tried in a brand new DA installation on a similar server running CentOS 4.2 (and just installed).

The problem only started occurring recently.

Local clients have no problem downloading the emails. Mail2Web (www.mail2web.com) has no problem with the emails.

Both the working and non-working machines have exactly the same version of PHP (4.4.2) with the same settings (phpinfo is the same on both). Both have the latest Zend Optimizer, and both run the same php.ini file.

What else should we be looking at?

Thanks.

Jeff



Here's what we've done:

Updated both imapd and vm-pop3d.

 

[DirectAdmin Support]

Hello,

Try checking the messages manually, eg:

telnet localhost 110
LOGIN [email][email protected][/email]
PASS pass
LIST
RETR 5
QUIT

Where 5 is the number on the left in the output that "LIST" generates... try RETR'ing each email.. until you find the suspect email. Check for any weird output that doesn't look right.

So it works through external mail clients? Eg, have you also tried with outlook to see if it's a bug in the client, or bug in vm-pop3d/imapd?

One option might be to see if php5 does anything for it, if it's a php client issue.

John

 

[nobaloney]

Thanks, John.

I really thought it was a php issue. Perhaps a weird library issue because the nonworking machine is CentOS3 and the working one CentOS4.

You've given me some good ideas and I'll try them.

I guess I never thought of doing POP protocol from the command line, because I don't know POP protocol . I know smtp protocol and I test exim manually all the time.

I learned something new today .

Again, thanks.

Jeff

 

[duke28]

i have the same problem with some email ebay and some clients..

the email advertise from ebay load very slow in the webmail
but just if you use internet explorer 7.x


.. with ie 6.x its load nice..
and with squirrelmail is good too

strange

 

[nobaloney]

Using John's idea we eventually traced our problem to bad headers in spam email.

It appeared to be a problem (I won't call it a bug) in the email clients.

Your problem may be different. Can you download at what you'd consider normal speed using an email client such as Outlook?

It may be a problem in how the display code is retrieving message parts, especially images.

And John, I'd be happy to try with Outlook, just as soon as MicroSloth^H^H^H^Hoft makes it available for Linux (as the cleaning lady told my mother back in the 60s, "sorry, I don't do windows").

Jeff