Input Your experience with "Mail delivery troubleshooting" in Plesk

[AYamshanov]

Server operating system version

Linux && Windows

Plesk version and microupdate number

18.0.x

Hi everyone,

Before asking about your experience regarding troubleshooting, let me bring some historical information

From year to year, we ask our users about most valuable and important features via annual surveys and take the result into account.

• In 2021 (Find the Plesk Obsidian 2021 survey results here!),
  • One of the most valuable features was "Mail Log Browser"
  • Part of the most desired features were "Mail delivery troubleshooting" (38.3%) and "Server-wide log browser"
• In 2022 (Check out the Plesk Obsidian 2022 survey results!),
  • One of the most valuable features was "Server-Wide Log Browser"
  • One of the most desired features was "Mail delivery troubleshooting" (36%)
• It looks like "Mail delivery troubleshooting" will also be in the list of most desired features in the 2023 annual survey.

Since the percentages don't change much, during the year, we are probably not investing in the area that customers expect and still have a lack of features here. Because of that, I would like to collect more information and details about real use-cases and scenarios for delivery troubleshooting you want. What typical and non-typical issues do you know? How do you troubleshoot delivery issues now? What tools do you use for troubleshooting? What do you expect from the feature in Plesk?

We appreciate any information!

 

[AYamshanov]

Is it really no one have issues with email delivery or troubleshooting mail delivery issues?

 

[Mark_NLD]

The Log Browser works great! Perhaps it is unknown to most?

It would be great if we could give customers access to the Log Browser - mail part in regards to their own domain(s).
Please see my related post here (and it's replies). So in short "Log Browser Extension for customers".

In regards to actual e-mail troubleshooting I guess most people use a tool like Newsletters spam test by mail-tester.com to troubleshoot general issues (we usually send clients a mail-tester.com e-mail address to which they send an e-mail for us to get a report). And currently SPF / DKIM / DMARC issues are more relevant, tools like easydmarc.com help to see which outgoing e-mails fail SPF / DKIM / DMARC.

 

[mow]

It would be nice to have the maillog processed and checked for certain problems automatically:

• greylisting problems (reattempt for same mail comes from another ip and is therefore greylisted too, if the domain is not already whitelisted)
• delivery errors due to spf/dkim/dmarc configuration errors (incoming and outgoing)
• mails sent per account, bounces per account (to catch accounts captured by spammers)

with separation of the log incidents (currently, when there's much concurrent traffic, log messages often are interleaved in a hard-to-read way)

 

[Kaspar]

@AYamshanov that sounds like a really resource intensive feature to create. Email is quite a complex topic with many different aspects these days. Ranging from IP reputation, blacklists and spam filtering to DNS related configurations (like SPF, DKIM and DMARC). Each of these aspects impact email usability. For many people these are complex topics. I am no expert on the subject either, but I consider myself skilled enough solve any email issue using the mail logs and in some cases external tools (like mail-tester.com).

Having said that, I really do like the suggestions made by @mow and @Mark_NLD. In particular the suggestion to let customers view the email logs for their domains. That would allow customers to better solve their own email issues (saving server administrators some valuable time and headaches). It's also easier for administrators to view log entries per domain (instead of browsing trough all log entries).

I also feel that the default email delivery failure reports from Postfix are hard to understand for most users. I know that's a Postfix thing and might not even be customizable. But for comparison look how clean and clear the email delivery failure reports are on Gmail or Office/Outlook 365.

Another thing I noticed on the Plesk forums and with my own clients is that quite a few of them are struggling with getting (outbound) email to work properly. Especially with hyperscale providers (like Azure, AWS, DO, ect) as these provider block outbound traffic on port 25. So a Email Provider like SendGrid or Mailgun is needed (or your own external mail server). Which can be daunting to configure for the average user, even with the many tutorials that can be found online. I know that this has been listed as a separate feature called smart hosts (if I am not mistaken) in the Plesk surveys. But I actually think that these two features (mail delivery troubleshooting and smart hosts) are intertwined for many users. Because if users can't get email to work (properly) on their server they are often inclined to use a Email Provider.

 

[AYamshanov]

First of all, thank you for sharing the information, it was helpful and pointed us in the right direction during work on the extension improvements!
The new version of the Log Browser extension has been released! Let us know if you have any feedback.

Log Browser v1.8.0​

We are happy to introduce a new version of the Log Browser extension. In the new version, Plesk customers (as well as Plesk administrators) can track email delivery and manage deferred emails right in the domain card (under the "Mail" tab). The feature is available only in Plesk for Linux (except for Ubuntu 24.04) with Postfix used as an MTA.
We will gradually enable the feature on Plesk servers starting from June 24, 2024. You can enable the feature manually in advance by adding the following lines to the panel.ini file:

[ext-log-browser]
mailQueue.customerAccess = true

By default, information about emails with the Rejected status is removed from the extension's database after 48 hours to prevent rapid growth of the database. If you need to set another period for storing this information, you can always add the following lines to the panel.ini file:

[ext-log-browser]
mailQueue.rejectedRemovalPeriod = 172800 ; in seconds

Note: The feature works on top of the journald service and follows the server-wide log configuration. If the logs are rotated or removed, information about the emails will also be unavailable. Processing the logs for the first time may consume extra server resources. Afterwards, the extension will process only changed data every hour.

 

[Mark_NLD]

This is just awesome! Thank you!

 

[deltatech]

I still don't have this feature on version 18.0.62. I even enabled it in panel.ini and restarted the sw-cp-server. Still no "Track Email Delivery" button. I am running plesk on AlmaLinux

 

[AYamshanov]

We are enabling the feature gradually on Plesk servers. If you enable the feature in `panel.ini`, it is not required to restart anything. Just need to refresh the page in a browser, it should be enough.

If you do not see the button, I think makes sense to do the next checks:

• is the extension updated? The feature is released with Log Browser 1.8.0,
• the panel.ini file does not contain any typos/errors,
• Track Email Delivery supports only systems where Postfix is used as an MTA.

 

[Mark_NLD]

I still don't have this feature on version 18.0.62. I even enabled it in panel.ini and restarted the sw-cp-server. Still no "Track Email Delivery" button. I am running plesk on AlmaLinux

Like @AYamshanov said, you also need to update Log Browser extension.

 

[JulianDot]

We are enabling the feature gradually on Plesk servers. If you enable the feature in `panel.ini`, it is not required to restart anything. Just need to refresh the page in a browser, it should be enough.

If you do not see the button, I think makes sense to do the next checks:

• is the extension updated? The feature is released with Log Browser 1.8.0,
• the panel.ini file does not contain any typos/errors,
• Track Email Delivery supports only systems where Postfix is used as an MTA.

Nope. Is not there that features.
- Log Brower is 1.8.1
- no error in panel.ini file
- Postfix is the MTA
checked on 2 servers, one with : Web Pro Edition , another one with : Web Admin Edition

Both have Almalinux 9

 

[AYamshanov]

Hm... have quickly checked how it works on AlmaLinux 9 just to be sure that everything is ok. Currently, can't confirm any issues right now. On my test server, the step that is required to be done first - is to edit the `panel.ini` file / add the next lines,

[ext-log-browser]
mailQueue.customerAccess = true

In this case, I think it makes sense to contact the Plesk Support team to allow them to check that everything is okay on the server. If there is an issue, we need details on how we can reproduce the issue to be able to fix it.

 

[JulianDot]

I can't open a ticket because I have Plesk licenses from Hetzner.
I triple checked, everything is set correctly

 

[EnriqueR]

I have the same probrem that @JulianDot
With two servers, Almalinux 8.9 and Ubuntu 22
Plesk licence with Contabo

 

[Nikolay]

@JulianDot @EnriqueR
I would suggest to try the following:
- un-install and install the extension
- go to Extensions > My extensions > Log Browser and check if it opens without errors
- as admin user , on a subscription page there is a right panel and it should have Action Log. Open it and check if there is Track Email Delivery tab

 

[JulianDot]

@JulianDot @EnriqueR
I would suggest to try the following:
- un-install and install the extension
- go to Extensions > My extensions > Log Browser and check if it opens without errors
- as admin user , on a subscription page there is a right panel and it should have Action Log. Open it and check if there is Track Email Delivery tab
View attachment 26492

- uninstalled and reinstalled the Log Browser extension
- Log Browser opens without error
- Action Log opened, no Track Email delivery tab there


NOTE
I just noticed there are errors with `curl`,
the command
curl https://somedomain.com
returns
curl: (92) HTTP/2 stream 0 was not closed cleanly: PROTOCOL_ERROR (err 1)

Maybe is related to this issue ?

 

[AYamshanov]

Could you please check the configured value with the Panel.ini extension, the "Viewer" tab,

• Panel.ini Configuration File

Just to absolutely exclude the chance that the `panel.ini` file contains any errors (including an error in other sections) and the correct setting is applied.

 

[JulianDot]

Could you please check the configured value with the Panel.ini extension, the "Viewer" tab,

• Panel.ini Configuration File

Just to absolutely exclude the chance that the `panel.ini` file contains any errors (including an error in other sections) and the correct setting is applied.
View attachment 26493

You are right.
Even if in editor there is the value "true"
in viewer is "false"

 

[Nikolay]

Put both parameters in one section, it should work:

[ext-log-browser]
mailQueue.customerAccess = true
mailQueue.rejectedRemovalPeriod = 172800

It parses parameters from top to bottom and if there is another mention of the same section, it resets previous values.

 

[JulianDot]

Put both parameters in one section, it should work:

[ext-log-browser]
mailQueue.customerAccess = true
mailQueue.rejectedRemovalPeriod = 172800

It parses parameters from top to bottom and if there is another mention of the same section, it reset previous values.

Yes, is logical , i was supposed to get it myself ...

Is working now.

I simply followed the What's new page

Maybe you can modify that page too : https://docs.plesk.com/release-notes/obsidian/change-log/?18062#18062

Thanks