Outgoing mail control; how is it possible to exceed unlimited?!?!

[burnleyvic]

Does anyone else see a problem with the below, notification? ...and I'm not referring to the sentence structure either. How exactly does one exceed something that's unlimited? Is there some new discovery in quantum physics that makes this possible?? String theory perhaps

----
Please be informed,

following customers' domains, mailboxes and subscriptions are reached their limits for outgoing emails for the period:
From Nov/06/2014 11:22 To Nov/06/2014 11:38

Domains: xxx.com, the limit is Unlimited

1371 attempt(s) to exceed limits from Nov/06/2014 11:31 until now.

 

[burnleyvic]

Further to this there is a bug in the outgoing mail control rate limits. According to this KB article http://kb.odin.com/en/121996;

'The following limits act as the default limits, which can be overridden in each service plan and subscription. The limits do not work server-wide, but act as a template for the plans and subscriptions for which no custom limits were specified.

I adjust the sending rates in a subscription, raised the outgoing rate for mail box, domain and subscription to 5000 (sever default for all 3 is much lower than this) and save and plesk reports no issue. If I now click on one of the mailboxes in that account to adjust its personal limits to 1000 the following warning appears at the top of the screen;

The limit on outgoing messages for an email address (Unlimited) cannot be greater than the limit for a domain (250).
The limit on outgoing messages for an email address (Unlimited) cannot be greater than the limit for a subscription (5000).

Plesk is taking the custom limit for subscription correctly but still uses the server default limit for domain (250 mph in this example) and thus ignoring my custom value of 5000 for the domain level. Experimenting by sending message through the mail box shows that it gets cut off at 250mph so the domain limit is certainly being applied with that incorrect value.

Can this please be submitted to the dev's for fixing. I expect its also the cause of the 'exceeded unlimited sending rate' mentioned above.

 

[burnleyvic]

As a temporary workaround i set the default domain limit to 4999, plesk reports that the value can't exceed the subscription level (500) which is fine. Now when i look at the subscription from my prev post it reports this;

The limit on outgoing messages for an email address (Unlimited) cannot be greater than the limit for a domain (4999).
The limit on outgoing messages for an email address (Unlimited) cannot be greater than the limit for a subscription (5000).

I should add that I can also set the server wide domain default value to unlimited, but chose 4999 as it makes it more obvious where plesk is getting this value from. Setting a very high domain default value seems to be the only workaround.

 

[Alexey.Plotnitsky]

this could help:
http://download1.parallels.com/Ples...inistrator-guide/index.htm?fileName=73369.htm

 

[burnleyvic]

Actually it doesn't and yes i did re-read over the manual just to be sure its configuration was counter intuitive. As above I've set the custom limit for mailbox, domain and subscription to 'unlimited' however plesk IGNORES the custom limit for domain and continues to take and enforce the server wide limit for domain. It correctly takes the custom limit for subscription and mailbox. I can reproduce this on all our Linux based plesk 12 servers.

You should be able to reproduce it as follows.

1. Set server wide limit for mail box, domain and subscription to say 10, 50 and 250 mph. (the actual numbers are arbitrary)
2. open a customers subscription as admin (from service providers view), click on outgoing mail control -> subscription tab -> change limit.
3. Select 'Custom value for the subscription' and set mailbox, domain and subscription to 'unlimited' (or to numbers greater than the server wide limit for that parameter).
4. click ok and plesk will report all custom limits are set with nice message in green.
5. click in the mail tab and select a mail box you have created in the subscription. up the top you will see in yellow 'The limit on outgoing messages for an email address (Unlimited) cannot be greater than the limit for a domain (xxx).' However we set the custom limit for the domain to 'unlimited' so there should be no warning...
6. you can verify the server wide domain limit is still in effect by trying to send more than xxx emails via the box. once you exceed xxx it will block you, even though custom value of 'unlimited' was selected.

.: can anyone else confirm this is a bug, because it sure looks like one to me.

 

[UFHH01]

*confirmed* on Ubuntu 14.04 / Ubuntu 12.04 and Debian 6 / 7 all with Plesk 12.0.18 ( MU 22 ).

 

[Alexey.Plotnitsky]

I've just tried this on a test server:
1) I've got the warning - "The limit on outgoing messages for an email address (Unlimited) cannot be greater than the limit for a domain ..."
2) However I was able to send more emails then it was specified in the server-wide default template limit. So custom mailbox's limit overrides the server-wide template.
3) Please try to update to latest Plesk 12.0.18 version

Please see screenshots below -

 

[burnleyvic]

OK so from your post it is certainly clear that plesk is using the global variable for domain in the warning as per your screenshot, rather than the custom subscription variable, but that's only a display textual cleanup (hopefully something you guys can tidy up in a future release so its consistent and less confusing?). I tested this again on some *new* mail boxes and it was able to exceed the domain limit despite the erroneous warning on the screen. The original failures that started this generated entries in the logs and also the notification triggered as per the title of this thread. Perhaps its some race condition as those mail boxes existed prior to outgoing mail limits being created. Unfortunately I don't have enough time to experiment with every possible combination to pin it down.

 

[burnleyvic]

from notifications;

Email Addresses


[email protected], the limit is Unlimited


2 attempt(s) to exceed limits from Nov/19/2014 10:27 to Nov/19/2014 10:38

how cool is that, I can do 2 m.p.h. faster than infinity! Assuming i only get the one alert i expect this is a result of the mail sending rate being changed in that hour.

 

[Alexey.Plotnitsky]

burnleyviс,

I agree, the notification is hilarious - "the sky is the limit"

Thanks, I will describe this to devs.

 

[burnley]

Here's another one:

--- CUT HERE ---
Subject: <plesk.server> Attempts to exceed outgoing limits for domains, mailboxes and subscriptions.

Please be informed,
following customers' domains, mailboxes and subscriptions are reached their limits for outgoing emails for the period:
From Nov/25/2014 10:52
To Nov/25/2014 11:07

Domains
domain.com.au, the limit is Unlimited
1047 attempt(s) to exceed limits from Nov/25/2014 10:31 until now
--- CUT HERE ---

Reminds me of Yngwie Malmsteen - Faster than the speed of light

 

[Alexey.Plotnitsky]

burnley,

Thanks, I will report this too.

 

[Sascha_Fuhrmann]

Is this issue fixed in a actual version? We have similar problems.

User Limit Mailbox: 1000
User Limit Domain: 1500
User Limit Subscription: 2000

Server Limit Mailbox: 100
Server Limit Domain: 150
Server Limit Subscription: 200

The user cannot send over 100 mails. After we set all to unlimited for the user the same result.

 

[burnleyvic]

No its not and as far as their support guys are concerned it works perfectly and we are just using it wrong. 0.O By all means give it another push, maybe you will have better luck.

 

[Tantrumedia]

This makes no sense at all...
Security wise, you'd want your default limits per hour to be low server wide, and then allow exceptions for clients who can justify needing to send lots of mail.
Why would you want the server default to be huge per domain, and then clamp down on individual accounts?
The hierarchy is upside down. We need to chat to the person who drew up the specification, and ask them to explain their logic... no-one else I've spoken to gets it either.

 

[burnleyvic]

Ah logic you say, well we are in the southern hemisphere so we figure the function only worked correctly in the northern hemisphere, which is why the techs couldn't find a problem. You know like the coriolis effect;

 

[Tantrumedia]

I thought that only affected draining bathwater?

 

[ChrisRoway]

ahhh, finally some other people that see this the same way as I do
Never understood why this should be usefull in the current implementation where the custom limit for sending emails can only be lowered from the server/default limit, as in 99.9% or all cases you really wan't it the other way around.

Best solution (imho) would be, to provide a server setting for max AND default limit, so customers can increase from the (low) default value but not exceed a certain max value that some thoughtless people might do otherwise.

 

[B_P]

To add to this discussion, what I am missing is the possibility to unblock a certain mailbox/domain/subscription through the web interface. This should be possible similar to the fail2ban approach where I can
a) see the list with blocked objects
b) can individually unblock a certain object

As an additional / alternative method, one could think of a solution where the limit can be changed temporarily (and will be reset automatically once the time is over...).

 

[tmuka]

This is really frustrating behavior... Hard to imagine how the login in this configuration or notifications makes sense...

"the limit is Unlimited 96 attempt(s) to exceed limits from Oct/06/2021 08:21 until now"