Email Services Have Stopped - Need to Upgrade Plesk

[MazdaRotaryClub]

Firstly please ignore what maybe a stupid question but fairly new to this.

We are running the below :-
License key number PLSK.00xxxxxxxxx
Operating system Linux 2.6.18-028stab068.3
Plesk version psa v8.3.0_build83080131.20 os_FedoraCore 7
Hostname MazdaRotaryClub.com

The problem we are now experiencing is that outbound emails have stopped. Our hosting company have recommended we upgrade the Plesk software, but I'm not sure how to go about this and the costs involved. From the google scans I've found that a full backup of the host is recommended prior to the upgrade, which is almost a given, but just lost from there.

Please any help is warmly welcomed.

Thanks
MazdaRotaryClub.com

 

[abdi]

outbound emails have stopped...host is recommended prior to the upgrade

I really doubt that upgrading plesk is the answer / solution to your problem! Ie, if your server can not send email then it means there is a problem with SMTP or sendmail, that you would need to investigate ..

There is also a high possibility that your queue is very large and thus processing is very slow ..You can confirm through your plesk, server settings, mail settings, queue ...

Never the less, if you need to upgrade your Plesk, it's easy and you can just run:

 /usr/local/psa/admin/sbin/autoinstaller

from shell or better still use the upgrade feature in the control panel ...

 

[Nikolay.]

Plesk 8.3.0 on FedoraCore 7?! That's a really old software. Indeed you need to switch to a recent Plesk version. However you will not be able to upgrade, since upgrades from versions that old are not supported and, more importantly, this OS is not supported either. You'll need to migrate to a new server with Plesk on a new OS.

 

[MazdaRotaryClub]

Thanks for the quick replies. Checking the outgoing email queue (via Plesk) it's only around 40-60 emails as I've kept clearing down the junk emails. Regarding the SMTP service, sadly being a Windows person I'm lost as to how to check/start the services as it's a linux host.

Via Plesk I've checked and restarted both SMTP (Qmail) and IMAP/POP3 (Courier-IMAP) services, but something else is still blocking them being sent. So I'm starting to think that the hosting company might have blocked email traffic from the host? I'm I thinking crazy here?

Going forward it looks like we'll have to upgrade the OS revision, Plesk and then a possible forum software update but thats a way down the road.

Thanks
Fish

 

[Faris Raouf]

You need to see what's actually happening on your system.
The mail log is at /usr/local/psa/var/log/maillog and in order to see what it is doing in real time use the command:
tail -f /usr/local/psa/var/log/maillog
(press CTRL-C to exit)

You should also check the main message log:
tail -f /var/log/messages

Basically, looking at these two logs will give you clue as to what is happening.

To restart a service such as qmail, use the service command, e.g.:
service qmail restart

Note that in Linux, for many things you need to be the root user (same as Admin in Windows).
So depending on how you login, you may need to change to the root user by issuing the command:
su -
(and you will be asked for the root password if you are not already root. If you are already root you won't be asked and so you don't actually need to "su -")

 

[Faris Raouf]

In addition to everything else, running 8.3 on FC7 is a spammer and hacker's dream. There will be a number of vulnerabilities in your system, not the least of which is a way for the bad guys to obtain all your passwords remotely (although I could be mistaken in thinking 8.3 was vulnerable to this).

You will not be able to upgrade in the same way you might upgrade a version of Windows. You will need to get yourself a new server, with Centos 6 on it (Don't go for Fedora of any type -- it is not suitable for hosting environments as it EOLs very quickly) and Plesk 11.5 (or 6 or later), then use the Plesk Migration Manager to move your customers and their data. I'm afraid it is going to be quite a culture shock - Plesk 11.x is hugely different to 8.x. But in a good way, once you get your head round the concept of Customers who have Subscriptions which contain Domains, as opposed to the old Client->Domain system of Plesk 8.x.

Could your host be blocking your emails? Sure, they could, especially if your server had been sending spam without you knowing. But surely they would have told you that, and there would have been more than just a few emails in your queue, so I would say it is more likely something else.