Mail Server Issues

[Steve]

I have one machine with a  POP3 mail account set to leave mail on the server until it's removed from the inbox of that machine, the rest are IMAP.

[Simon]

You can usually choose to leave mail on the server with POP3, then you would have a copy stored on the downloading machine, and also left on the server if you needed to access it that way.  It's just a way to avoid mail from being lost due to server failures, such as this. 

[Simon]

Update:

To those experiencing non receipt of sent emails, there was a spam attack on smtp.idnet.net and mail.idnet.net earlier on, which has now been dealt with, but there may be a queue of outgoing mail on those servers. 

To those who still have mail missing from prior to the server fault, any mail that was still on the server at the time of the malfunction, will be in the queue waiting to be restored.  IDNet are doing all that they can to restore all missing mail, but this is an ongoing process, so they ask for your continued patience, and apologise again for any inconvenience caused. 

[Steve]

Thanks Simon 

[netn00b]

is mail working ?

3 times today i've requested confirmation of my user name and password for the idnet customer login and it tells me it's sent it to me but i have nothing received

[meva]

I am having serious problems with my email using Windows Live and Thunderbird as email clients on 2 PCs accessing two email accounts - some 3 days after the failure. I run imap folders and both clients are timing out waiting for the imap server to respond - both download headers but only retrieve small messages of a couple of lines (anything larger causes timeout). I have spoken to the helpdesk who suggested removing and recreating the accounts - which I have done on both PCs. Webmail is OK if a little slow.

Does anyone have suggestions as to what could be wrong / more diagnostics? At the moment I find it difficult to believe the email service is operating normally.

Many thanks
Martin

[pctech]

Think you'll need to go back to support as sounds like the servers are still not running as normal.

[Steve]

 


Martin

My IMAP access has been troublesome until this evening but all seems well at present. I use a Mac and I've started from scratch a few times without benefit. BTW I use securemail.idnet.com on 993

[JB]

Update:

To those experiencing non receipt of sent emails, there was a spam attack on smtp.idnet.net and mail.idnet.net earlier on

Thanks Simon. Talk about unlucky!

[JB]

3 times today i've requested confirmation of my user name and password for the idnet customer login and it tells me it's sent it to me but i have nothing received

An automated email from IDNet which was generated at 1640 has only just arrived here at 2140. It must be due to the spam attack. I'm sure yours will start to flow soon.

[Steve]

Mine took 90 mins for the same so things maybe improving.

[Simon]

I am having serious problems with my email using Windows Live and Thunderbird as email clients on 2 PCs accessing two email accounts - some 3 days after the failure. I run imap folders and both clients are timing out waiting for the imap server to respond - both download headers but only retrieve small messages of a couple of lines (anything larger causes timeout). I have spoken to the helpdesk who suggested removing and recreating the accounts - which I have done on both PCs. Webmail is OK if a little slow.

Does anyone have suggestions as to what could be wrong / more diagnostics? At the moment I find it difficult to believe the email service is operating normally.

Many thanks
Martin

I've moved you into the mail server issues thread, so as to keep things tidy. 

[ElectricTrev]

Support have been dealing with my problems mentioned earlier. Result : I have now discovered that I have a problem relating to message size. This occurs with both Thunderbird and Windows Live. If I have emails <20k then everything works fine. 20->45k takes a long time but gets there. >48k forget it. Use webmail to move/delete the large email and the rest download. Seems hard to believe this is just the high load on the server while recovery takes place.

[esh]

One of the users here has just noticed they have a whole week of missing emails (nothing between the 14th and 20th). The message headers are still on all the blackberry handsets but the actual messages are completely gone. Is this likely to come back with the restoration? Should I contact support regarding this?

[Steve]

I think that's the only way you'll get an answer esh, are they POP3 or IMAP on the Blackberry

[Simon]

As I understand it, any mail that was still on the server at the time of the crash, will be waiting to be restored.  Feel free to contact support, though, as I haven't spoken to them for an update today, so I don't know how things are going.

[meva]

I am still seeing very slow or no access to messages from the imap server - seems to be dependent upon size of message as Electrev describes. I am also missing email between 14th and 21st January. I have rased this with support who say that cause of v. poor imap performance is server load because of restoring large volumes of email. They expect this to be completed by this Friday. Given this I don't feel it is justified to describe the email service as providing a good service.

I have expressed my unhappiness. I would be interested in understanding the underlying architecture used for email as I thought that SANs + virtualisation had improved resilience so that this sort of outage shouldn't happen or have this impact.

Martin 

[Simon]

TBH, I'm not currently having any problems with IMAP or POP3, but maybe I'm lucky.  I do download all of my emails every evening, so I had none on the server to be restored, other than a few 'Sent' items which don't seem to have materialised again yet.

I would be interested in understanding the underlying architecture used for email as I thought that SANs + virtualisation had improved resilience so that this sort of outage shouldn't happen or have this impact.

I have no idea, so I won't even try to answer that.

[MarlyM]

Had all my emails redelivered again today.

Anything else going on?

[Steve]

My wife had a load through today but they were all 'missing' ones I believe.

[MarlyM]

My wife had a load through today but they were all 'missing' ones I believe.

Mine were duplicates again.

Oh well, I had nothing to do this evening anyway!! 

[esh]

Yeah, had a ton of dupe emails come through here as well.

[Simon]

I've had duplicates, but also some of my sent mail has now reappeared.

[krysia]

Just to say that all our missing mail (14-19 Jan) has now been restored to our IMAP accounts.

I was interested that Simon said

You can usually choose to leave mail on the server with POP3 . 

I've never seen any setting in OE that would allow this, which is why I go the IMAP route.  Obviously, it'd be perfect both to download messages and to leave them on the server so that they can be accessed from anywhere - how do you set up OE to do that?

[Glenn]

http://www.hosting.com/support/email/pop3 its for 2002, but I would think other versions of Outlook have a similar option