Names for POP3/IMAP mail accounts

[faris]

I hope someone can help me. I'm really stuck.

I've always had the "Use of short (webmaster) and full ([email protected]) POP3/IMAP mail account names is allowed" enabled, as opposed to "Only use of full POP3/IMAP mail accounts names is allowed" in Server -> Mail in Plesk.

But when I went in to enable MAPS for the first time ever (spam is increasing beyond a tolerable level) Plesk wouldn't let me, saying:

"Unable to allow the use of short mail names. There are mailnames and password pairs matching."

What can I do? If I set things to "only use full" then I expect ALL our customers to be on the phone complaining, because thet have all been using short mailnames.

I expect there aren't that many of these matching pairs that Plesk is talking about though. If only I knew which they were then I could do something about it. But how on earth can I do that?

Any suggestions would be appreciated.

Thanks,

Faris.

 

[gregg@]

Farris,
With the use of short names, you must insure that there and no dupliate email names across all your hosted domains. Even if one duplicate shows up, both of the domains will begin losing mail! I would expect that this is a much less tolerable situation than having to sign in with a full name.

It would also seem that a bit of notice to your customers would go a long way in mitigating any resistance.


Gregg

 

[faris]

This is very true Gregg, and when we upgrade to Plesk 8 (which will necessitate an OS Upgrade as well - we are on RedHat 9 and we'll have to move to Centos 4) we'll definitely do that.

But in the meantime I'd love to be able to be able to find an easy way of finding the existing duplicates. There must be a way, but even with a long look at the PSA database I can't figure out where/how it stores the mainnames and their associated passwords.

Faris.

 

[faris]

Ah!

After some experimentation, this is what I need:

SELECT domains.name, mail.mail_name, accounts.password FROM mail, domains, accounts WHERE domains.id = mail.dom_id AND accounts.id = mail.account_id ORDER BY accounts.password, mail.mail_name;

This, unless I've got something fundamentally wrong, lists all mailnames and passwords in the order that I need to spot the problem --- and hey presto, I've found two email addresses on two domains belonging to the same user with the same mailname and password.

I'll report back if modifying the password works.

 

[stylefish]

did this work for you?

I am having the same problem except I can't find any users who share the same username and password combination.

Unless you count redirect emails that have no password. For example there are several emails which have the username info and no password. Could that be causing this error message?

 

[gregg@]

Stylefish,
Since you didn't mention a version, I am working under the belief that you are on 7.5.4 Reloaded for Unix. If this is not the case, then everything I say should be suspect.

I have personally experienced mail issues using only short names even with the passwords being different! This plays into your description of the redirects which have no password.

I remain firmly standing on the fact that full mail names ([email protected]) are the best path for keeping all things straight.

Yes, the short names are "convenient" for small servers, but in the long run, they cost you more time in administration and customer satisfaction when duplicates pop up.

 

[faris]

Apologies for the late reply.

Yes, it worked a charm but yes, any mailnames with "blank" passwords also apply here when it comes to duplicates.

For example I had some mailgroups with no passwords, and had to allocate passwords in order to get things working correctly.

Once I had done that and Plesk was happy and allowed me to start using sbl-xbl.spamhaus.com which dramatically reduced spam.

*** BUT THERE IS A SILLY DRAWBACK ***

Within a week I had a customer complain that they could not send email via authenticated smtp. Seems their ISP got blacklisted on spamhaus. And because of the way things are done in Plesk, the blacklist affects users sending email via the server as well as email coming in from remote serevers.

On the face of it this would be a good thing. Well, it is really. But how do you explain this to a client who isn't really interesting in why, and just wants things to work?

Now aparently it is possible to add an -a [ip address] to whitelist an IP to the smtp_psa file. But I need to whitelist an IP range, and I'm not sure this is possible with the -a option.

The whitelist/blacklist options that are also in the mail section in the server part of the CP do not apply to IPs blocked by MAPS. Very annoying.

There is a thread elsewhere here in the forum about greylisting. This looks very interesting indeed and seems to work like a charm for many people. The drawback is that it needs a custom-compiled qmail binary, which I'm a little worried about installing for some reason. I shouldn't be really, but I just dislike replacing plesk-supplied stuff with something else.

Faris.

 

[jhuedder]

Hi,

I just found this thread because it describes one of my problems, too.

There is a SQL-statement mentioned. Since I am not familiar with the way Plesk stores its information I would like to know where I have to give that statement (which tool / command-line-program)?

Thanks,

Joerg
info(at)hueddersen.de

 

[faris]

There are different ways to do this.

Maybe the simplest would be to use the mysql command line utility.

first su - to change to the root user:

su -
(enter root password)

Then do this:

mysql -u admin -p 
(enter the admin password you use to login to plesk)

now you are in mysql. you need to tell it to use the psa database.

at the "mysql>" prompt, enter "use psa;"
(as follows -- note the semicolon after each command is vital)

mysql> use psa;

Now, again at the mysql> prompt, enter the sql statement I mentioned in an earlier message.
(as follows -- note the semicolon after each command is vital - and type everything as one line)

mysql> SELECT domains.name, mail.mail_name, accounts.password FROM mail, domains, accounts WHERE domains.id = mail.dom_id AND accounts.id = mail.account_id ORDER BY accounts.password, mail.mail_name;

You will then get output similar to this:

+---------------------+-----------+----------+
| name                | mail_name | password |
+---------------------+-----------+----------+
| domain | address     | password   |
| domain | address     | password   |
+---------------------+-----------+----------+
2 rows in set (0.00 sec)

You will get lots of rows, not just two as in the example. In theory all addresses with the same password will be one below the other. Go through the list to look for passwords that are the same and make a note of which account they are for.

Also change any blank passwords to something else (blank passwords are common for accounts that redirect and don't have mailboxes, but Plesk will still complain so just change the passwords for those accounts to something other than noting at all)

enter the command "exit" to return to the command prompt.

Faris.

 

[Griffith]

Solution for this:
mysql -u admin -p psa

SELECT a.*, m1.*,m1.mail_name FROM mail m1, accounts a, mail m2 WHERE m1.account_id=a.id AND a.type='crypt' AND m1.id!=m2.id AND m1.mail_name=m2.mail_name;

If you get hits there then you have a "problem password".

You can also test this:
SELECT COUNT(*) AS num FROM mail m, accounts a WHERE m.account_id=a.id GROUP BY m.mail_name, a.password having num > 1;

This is the sql that plesk runs when you press Server -> MAIL in plesk admin.