nameserver and webmail probs

J

jasonblanc

Guest
Hi,
I'm new at this and I'm really stuck on something, any help would be glorious.

I've got a VPS with webfusion, and though I can host domains quite happily, the mailboxes and webmail side of things doesn't work at all. Using OutXpress (incoming mail server set to mail.client'sdomain.co.uk) I just get 'cannot find server 0x800CCC0F' or 'server unexpectedly terminated connection 0x800CCC0D'.

After much swearing at pc and cat I think it might be a nameserver issue. I use the default nameservers (ns.123-reg.co.uk / ns2.123-reg.co.uk) for all hosted domains as this is the company I use for registering doms.

Should I register my own DNS, and if so what do I call it and where can I register it? (my own site is www.blanckanvas.co.uk, so is it ns.blanckanvas.co.uk etc?) . If so after that then what?

The reason I think this is there's another thread:

http://forum.swsoft.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=22170

that looks like the same problem, but lord help my I'm just not as bright as that chap

Thanks in advance

J
 
Got the mail boxes sorted.

Didn't have to do anything with the nameservers after all, I changed the DNS settings in 123-REG to include 'A' and 'MX' records for mail.domainName.co.uk.

After a couple of hours the mail boxes worked and OutXp found the incoming mail server no probs.

Got another mail problem though now :rolleyes:

Why doesn't php mail() function work for sending email forms. It sometimes works (though rarely), but the script never throws an error (ie the script thinks it's working fine), but no mail arrives.

I'm running a windows VPS, and a friend said something about php not being designed for windows platforms so mail() not working properly might be a side-effect of that. I can't accept that. I'm sure it's in the server settings somewhere but I don't have enough experience to know where to prod.

Can anyone help??
 
ok... the mailboxes aren't working anymore/again.

I haven't changed any settings (DNS or otherwise) and now OutXP can not find the incoming mail server.

I've email and called webfusion support on this issue, so we'll see.

I'll keep you posted
 
found the problem..

checked system components in plesk and found a big red 'X' next to mailEnable 1.9.

Had to go into virtual desktop through Virtuozzo, and found mailEnable Administrator. The only service that was stopped was the pop3 mailbox manager, so I started it, and hey presto everything works now. :D

I have no idea why this had been turned off, I'm certain I didn't do it directly, but it'll be interesting to see if it does it again..

Oh, and the mail() function in php is working now, but only for simple emails, with no headers. ie:

mail($to, $subject, $message);

I'll try to figure that one out better.
 
Ok, this is getting boring now! :eek:

I thought everything was fine with the mail side of things, then the pop3 service for mailEnable 1.9 decides to switch itself off again, effectively downing the mail server for the VPS (ie all hosted sites with mailboxes have no incoming mail server)

It's a simple matter to go into virtual desktop and restart the pop3 service through mailEnable Administrator, but heck; why should I need to every week. It is not brilliant to be emailed by a client to say that his incoming email doesn't work, once is ok, twice fair enough but every week makes me look a bit incompetant. I'd rather avoid that.

Does anyone have any ideas why the pop3 service for mailEnable 1.9 likes turning itself off?? I'm not aware of the VPS restarting but I'm hardly monitoring it 24/7 so could it be that if the server goes down briefly and restarts that the pop3 service is defaulted to STOPPED for the VPS?
 
Originally posted by jasonblanc
Ok, this is getting boring now! :eek:

I thought everything was fine with the mail side of things, then the pop3 service for mailEnable 1.9 decides to switch itself off again, effectively downing the mail server for the VPS (ie all hosted sites with mailboxes have no incoming mail server)

It's a simple matter to go into virtual desktop and restart the pop3 service through mailEnable Administrator, but heck; why should I need to every week. It is not brilliant to be emailed by a client to say that his incoming email doesn't work, once is ok, twice fair enough but every week makes me look a bit incompetant. I'd rather avoid that.

Does anyone have any ideas why the pop3 service for mailEnable 1.9 likes turning itself off?? I'm not aware of the VPS restarting but I'm hardly monitoring it 24/7 so could it be that if the server goes down briefly and restarts that the pop3 service is defaulted to STOPPED for the VPS?

I'm having this problem too. Any suggestions?
 
it's been a while since i had that problem, can you be more specific what's happening with your server?

how long have you had the server?

have you changed any settings from default?

is the firewall turned on? (mine wasn't)

has the mail server worked before now etc etc?

i'm fairly new to server admin myself but i'll help if i can
 
Originally posted by jasonblanc
it's been a while since i had that problem, can you be more specific what's happening with your server?

how long have you had the server?

have you changed any settings from default?

is the firewall turned on? (mine wasn't)

has the mail server worked before now etc etc?

i'm fairly new to server admin myself but i'll help if i can

This seemed to cause problems once I turned on SpamAssassin filtering. I turned it off and no problems since. I guess I'll leave it off for now until I can figure out what the problem is.

I searched first which is how I found this topic, but I didn't realize that this topic was in the Linux forum (I'm running a Windows 2003 server). My mistake!
 
got a win2k3 server myself, maybe that's why i never got a reply in this forum :D

the things i did to fix the problem were.

1.turned spamassasin ON, but limited the mail threads to 3 (i think)

2.made the max mail file size bigger (increased to 10MB i think)

3.used MAPS filtering (picked a few general ones from any list found on the net) as extra protection against spam

the probs i was having were related to a couple of big emails in one account that were sticking in the filters, and causing mass mail rejections across all hosted domains.

also got the server 'hacked' due to no firewall and poor mail form coding, and ended up being used to SEND spam to others, was not happy. All ok now though. I'm no expert but i would play with the filters, threads and max-mail size settings if i were you.
 
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