Bouncing Email

[warpsite]

I'm not sure what's wrong with the mail server on 65.98.16.122 (assuming that that's where it's located), but about once or twice a month one or all of my domains start bouncing email back to the sender.

I get tired of having to go to Yahoo Groups and reset my addresses, or explaining to clients why I didn't answer or rejected their inquiries. Just this past week on a group that I moderate, a message was posted by a new listee who's still being moderated and I didn't see it until I logged in and checked my groups at Yahoo.

The message was supposed to come to my address for approval, not sit there for two weeks waiting for me to check in.

Has anyone else had this problem, and what can be done to correct it?

I've already tried several tickets, but the problem comes back every month.

- Mike

[Alan B]

Well, you've made only a vague description of the problem. If you want help, you're going to have to provide more detail. For example: exact wording of the bounce messages; originator of the bounces; whether you checked to see if your mail account or entire cPanel account were near their disk quota; etc.

[warpsite]

I never see any bounce messages other than the warnings I get from the various non-Yahoo lists that I'm on ("Your address has been bouncing messages", that sort of thing.), Yahoo and my other lists just shut my addresses down until I reset them.

I've set my main account at each domain to drop the odd messages that come in into "neverland" (or whatever that black hole thing is that you can use.)

It's messages that are addressed to me that bounce, not messages that I send.

My mail is set to check every ten minutes, and my email client is open and checking messages for something like 10 to 16 hours each day. Can't see how it's hitting the quota.

It's as if the sending server cannot find the mail server at my domains. I thought that maybe WHB was experiencing reoccurring issues that were causing the problem every month.

[Lena S.]

Please contact our technical department by submitting a ticket to them at whbsupport.com and describle this problem in as much details as possible so that they could assist you with this.
If you have already submitted tickets on this issue, please provide us with the ticket ID.

[Alan B]

I never see any bounce messages other than the warnings I get from the various non-Yahoo lists that I'm on

It's messages that are addressed to me that bounce, not messages that I send.

I understand that, but you could send test messages to your WHB address from an outside address. Once you receive a couple of bounces, you can then look for specifics.

Can't see how it's hitting the quota.

As I wrote, mail account quota is only one possible issue. It could be that the entire cPanel account is nearing quota. I had to speculate, since you provided no detail.

It's as if the sending server cannot find the mail server at my domains.

There is no evidence of that, based on what you provided.

[warpsite]

Please contact our technical department by submitting a ticket to them at whbsupport.com and describle this problem in as much details as possible so that they could assist you with this.
If you have already submitted tickets on this issue, please provide us with the ticket ID.

I have, several times. It just comes back and starts again each month. There's no time table involved, I notice that I'm not getting mail from a list, or I get a bounce warning from a list.

I'll start another ticket, but having to do so is disappointing.

- Mike

[Sergey S.]

Pleas let us know the ticket ID as soon as the ticket is submitted and we will attempt to look into this problem as deep as possible to find out what is actually causing such interruption.

[warpsite]

Zvu-756188

[Sergey S.]

Please send us the bounced messages (including headers) as Evgeniy G. requested in his reply to your ticket (ZVU-756188) on 25 Feb 2009.
Without the bounced messages (including headers) we can not determine the exact reason of the issue.

[haynes]

Hi warpsite, have you solved your problem? if yes then please tell my how you have got success on your problem because I m getting the problem that you had before.



Thanks alot!

[warpsite]

Well, I got a response on my ticket. We'll have to wait to see if it solves the issue.

I can't seem to get across to support that it's not my messages that are bouncing, it's messages that are being sent to my accounts. They keep asking for the "entire bounced messages, including the headers", but I do not have any of those. It's not my messages that are bouncing and being returned, it's the sender's messages that are being returned to the senders, not to me.The last response that I got from support was:

"We have not seen any error in the logs on the server. Could you please check how mail works now and let us know if the problem still persists?"

Again, I'll know if the problem is _not_ fixed if Yahoo or one of the non-Yahoo lists lets me know that my address is bouncing messages again. Until or if that happens, I won't know a thing.

I'm curious how many others are having this same problem, "haynes". If it's specific to my domains or if it's happening to a number of other folk on whichever server hosts my email.

[Sergey S.]

Well if it is not you who is getting the bounced messages that is again a little auxiliary piece of information that is useful for solving the problem. You need to ask those who are getting the bounced message to give them to you, including full headers, so that you can give them to us.
Without information the problem can not be solved. If there is anything else that you know and haven't told us yet, please do so in order for us to help you.

[Alan B]

The reason Support asks for the bounce messages is that they would provide information to help determine why this occurs. That's the same reason why I advised you to send test messages to your account in hopes of getting a bounce. Without evidence of bounces, and without any errors in the logs, it's entirely possible that this is not a WHB problem at all.

[warpsite]

So, if any of you have a definite method of getting bounce messages, including the headers, from Yahoo Groups, please do tell.

Also, if you have a definite method of letting the automated software running the non-Yahoo lists that I'm on know to forward the bounce messages that they are receiving in response to list messages sent to my address, again, please do tell.

Then there are all of those individuals who get caught up in this impossible to predict bouncing issue whose messages never reach me, and who do not bother to try again after their message bounces. Wonderful way to lose out on new clients, and to lose old ones because "you" "dropped the ball" on the accounts that you're hosting with WHB.

Golly, I guess that I'm up poop creek without the proverbial paddle.

How do I send myself messages during these episodes when I have no way of predicting the issue before it happens or while it is happening? I only find out about the episodes AFTER it's occurred.

This is non-productive from my point of view. I'm being asked for material that I cannot provide due to the very nature of the issue.

IMO, there are SPAM (or other) issues with the mail server, and the domains hosted on that server are suffering from the overload and/or the IP being repeatedly black listed every month.

Or maybe its restless cyberspirits, I don't really know.

Maybe someone will figure out what's going on with the mail server. From what I see, I'm not the only one experiencing the problem.

I run simple websites and use the POP3's provided by WHB, I use forwarders to forward messages to my actual accounts.

I haven't changed anything email-wise since I went with WHB; this problem has been going on for at least the past year of service.

[Anna M.]

We appreciate your inconveniences, but as it has already been said, we need more details, to be able to assist you.
So please be so kind to create a mailbox on any of free mail sites and try to send test message to your mailbox which has this 'bounce messages' thing and check if it received your test message or not.
If you got the same bounce message as those how are trying to send mail to you, provide us with this message and the header
Awaiting your response

[Alan B]

Have you checked to ensure that the account is not nearing quota? Have you checked to see if you have a spambox folder enabled that is filling up and using up the quota? Do you have mail forwarders using the same address as this mail account, that might be creating a loop?

[warpsite]

"... create a mailbox on any of free mail sites and try to send test message to your mailbox..."

I have no way of predicting the problem occurring. I would have to send messages every few minutes, every hour, 24/7 in order to catch it happening. I work for a living, and have some semblance of a life. I simply do not have that kind of time to waste.

"... quota... spambox folder... mail forwarders using the same address as this mail account..."

Alan, I don't understand the quota thing. If my email client (Outlook 2002) is checking my email every ten minutes (except for at night when I'm sleeping), how can the accounts hit a quota and cause messages to bounce?

I use Spam Assassin, but do not know of any "spambox folder". It's supposed to tag messages with "[SPAM]" so I can have a filter weed them out when I download messages.

I have a single mail forwarder at each site that causes mail sent to my actual address to be sent to my Gmail account (almost all of the forwarders at the sites forward to one actual address that I do not give out to anyone.)

I travel to conventions and use the single forwarder to forward my email to my netbook. I can simply delete those messages after reading since they're just a copy of the messages sent to my actual address. It's the same as my actual address. It allows me to use my netbook (Gmail) respond to any message that can't wait until I get home to the office.

I started using this last year in January 2008, got rid of it in February 2008, then reactivated it in January 2009. It is currently active.

But I do not think that it's the problem since:

1. Even when the forwarder was not active, the problem still occurred.

and 2. My son, who had accounts at my domain until recently, had the same bouncing problem with his account. His account consisted of a few forwarders that forwarded to a single actual account. Same problem as my account. Messages randomly start bouncing, then it stops, a couple of times per month. He never used a Gmail forwarder like the one described above.)

I'm sorry that I am ticked off about this. The problem just started out of the blue and has been occurring for more than a year from before I used the forwarder described above.) It's hard to believe that WHB expects me to run this down for them, or rather, that they want material that I cannot supply without an enormous amount of work on my part.

I'm not a domain genius. I know enough to get along quite comfortably, nothing really fancy or complicated. But losing email to this mysterious problem is frustrating.

[Arkadij S]

Hi,

Quota is a dedicated diskspace. By default email quota is set to 250 MB for one account. If you have custom disk space separated for your email, this may get used up.
You can check it in your cPanel -> Email Accounts, comparing 'Usage' and 'Quota'.

Another email quota, we have is 200 outgoing emails per domain/hour limit.
As far as you’ve got a forwarder, all these forwardings are considered as attempts to send messages, once they reach that limit, your emails settle in the email queue and cause additional hit count while retrying to be delivered.

We also have a limit on 60 SMTP connections per hour for one IP-address for a sending server, so once this remote server reaches this limit, our server starts refusing all the other mail delivery attempts during an hour. If the sending server’s email queue (for our server specifically) grows to the rate of emails it may deliver during an hour, the senders of undelivered emails may start receiving bounce messages after several failed delivery attempts.

As for the spam box, you can activate it having clicked Enable Spam Box in SpamAssassin. Since then any emails identified by SpamAssassin as spam will get into a separate mail folder named "spam", which will be created automatically. Please note, that this needs to be emptied regularly, in order to avoid quota exceeding.

As for your son's problem, it's natural, as far as he has his mail account resides at your domain.

We are really sorry for these inconveniences and are still awaiting the copy of the bounce messages, you receive with all the headers included, either we cannot guarantee you fast and sufficient support regarding this.

[Alan B]

What is your domain name? It should be tested to see if there are any DNS errors or Mx errors.

[warpsite]

"... default email quota is set to 250 MB for one account..."

I use the defaults.

"... 200 outgoing emails per domain/hour limit..."

I might conceivably send (with the forwarders) that many in a day, but not in an hour.

"... 60 SMTP connections per hour for one IP-address for a sending server..."

I'm afraid that this one is over my head. I'm not sure how the SMTP connections thing works, as in how many connections that a sending server is going to use to send one message.

"... Enable Spam Box in SpamAssassin..."

Not using that option.

"As for your son's problem, it's natural, as far as he has his mail account resides at your domain."

He was having the same problem as me with senders bouncing messages. It's why he moved his email to another service.

"... still awaiting the copy of the bounce messages..."

I've mentioned before that I don't find out about the bouncing until after it's happened. I finally get messages from the lists stating that they've had a problem getting through to my address, and deactivated my subscription. If I get that message, then the problem has stopped.

In order to catch the problem as it happens, I would have to continually send messages to my accounts from an outside source, every hour, 24/7 for a month or more. I don't have the time to do this.

Alan, they're "cfnson.com", "tbmp.org" and "watersysop.com". It seems that "cfnson.com" has the most problems with this issue, with "tbmp.org" running second and "watersysop.com" coming in last. Which is interesting as it also seems to reflect the mail volume for each domain.