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Old mail being resent after server image restore

JurgenN

New Pleskian
I have a VPS and I have the option to make a "snapshot" of the complete VPS. This is an image of the complete VPS, so in my case CentOs6 + Plesk11 + Atomic Secured Linux + some other extra services and components. And of course all the websites and mail of all my customers. In case of problems I can restore this VPS snapshot within a few minutes.

A few days ago I had to restore this image of my VPS, due to a complete server failure that I couldn't fix. However, the snapshot function is not automatic, and my last manual snapshot was from July 27. After restoring the snapshot, my VPS was happily running again, and due to the vacation period only minimal content had been changed by me or my clients and it could easily be redone. So, the damage was minimal and I praised the snapshot function.

However, and here's my problem, all "old" email is being resent. Not all at once, but continuously, like today is July 30. Tomorrow I will get the old mail I already got on July 31, etc. My clients receive their old email for the second time as well of course. But new mail is coming in as well, so it looks like there are two concurrent mail streams running.

I don't know if it's a Plesk problem or a CentOs problem though. Both Plesk and CentOs have correct date stamps, so it isn't a matter of simply adjusting the date, I think. But I don't have a clue where to look to fix this. Maybe anyone here has some idea? Any help would be appreciated!
 
Are all these mails being downloaded in outlook or also they appear in webmail??

Also, you could clear-up the mail queue just to be sure there is nothing in the queue still pending to be sent. Chances are those mails that were there at the time you took the snapshot are the ones being processed.
 
They appear also in webmail.
The mailqueue is empty, as far as I can see (but maybe I don't knwo the right places to look?).
The mail keeps coming like today is the old date. So not the old mail at the time the snapshot is made, but all mail from that date till now. So yesterday I got mail from July 29, today I get mail from July 30, etc.

So something in the server there is a part of the mail system that thinks today is July 30, and resends that mail... But it must be somewhere in a cache or something, otherwise it cannot be send again. I cannot find this cache or queue, however.
 
If you are running QMail the command to see how many emails in the queue is:

#/var/qmail/bin/qmail-qstat

While if its Postfix, then you can use

#mailq
 
OK that is interesting and rare too, though it seems to me like your VPS syncs with another major mail server. IE its like before mail hits your VPS it's stored somewhere else where your VPS picks it from ...

Am so sorry for the inconveniences caused, this is something I have not experienced my self so I cant be of much help either, however I will PM a Plesk Staff to advice you accordingly.
 
Wait... I may have found the cause. When I said the mails were in webmail too, I was a cheating a bit. I use MailwasherPro as a spamfilter. This software runs locally on my pc and checks the accounts on the server without retrieving them to the pc. So I thought this was technicaly the same as webmail, as both webmail and Mailwasher "look" directly on the server for new mails. With Mailwasher you can read the subjects and contents when the mails are still on the server.

But I suddenly realized that Mailwasher might use some caching system, and serves old messages as new. So I disabled it and since then no old messages come into my local mail client. So I guess Mailwasher was the cause of the problem. I'll have to check how to get rid of the old mail there then. Probably nothing to do with either Plesk or CentOs after all...

If I don't get old mails the coming hours, I know for sure it was Mailwasher. Fingers crossed.

Thanks for replying and sorry for the probably false alarm!
 
OK, that makes a lot of sense as with webmail being clean but mail client downloading OLD mail is a common problem and that is why firstly I wanted to know if the same was with webmail.

Glad you resolved it and just let us know incase you need more of our help ...
 
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