Instant e-mail Notification?

[pktraylor]

No notices as yet.


Paul

[icy]

They worked briefly about 40 hrs ago and then disappeared again.
What's up Dan?

[pktraylor]

Still no replys. Anyone have an idea whos working the problem?


Paul

[louis]

Paul they’re off for the weekend.

[Ben Palmer]

Haven't received any in over a week.

[robbc]

The email server being used by ChiefArchitect has a configuraton problem and is being identified by many mail servers as a possible SPAM site. I have sent full details to their administrator so I expect it will be fixed soon.

Depending on your ISP's email server you may or may not be able to add CA to your whitelist. If your server is validating sender emails against valid domains (a common and wise configuration) then there is nothng you can do but wait. This validation happens before SPAM and normal user whitelists are processed.

If you run your own email server then you can try disabling the rule to check sender domains. For Postfix the rule would be in the smtpd_recipient_restrictions:
reject_uknown_recipient_domain

Optionally you could also add 'ftp.chiefarchitect.com [66.45.163.70]' to Postfix's SMTPD whitelist and resolve it that way. Just make sure it is before the reject setting above.

If none of this made any sense ( ) then simply wait for CA to fix their mail server.

Robb Canfield
System Admin and new CA owner

[Roger Rines]

Spamcop is major Spam filtering service in the industry and is usually one of the earliest places a site will get listed if it is a true Spamming location. Because they are my mail service, I took a peak at what they were seeing in the database.

Click on the following links to look at Chief's mail status in SenderBase:
* Chief's Mail Sender IP
* Chief's Mail ftp IP
* Chief Architect.Com

If you are having a problem with getting mail and you suspect the mail might be getting blocked, the process at the end of the links above are a good place to look at what might be happening, and SenderBase is a good place to give your ISP some direction on what they might do to get things resolved.

Another place to look is in ORDB (Open Relay Database):
Chief's Mail Sender IP
Chief's Mail ftp IP

If a mail server is configured as an Open Relay, it allows unregistered third-party mail senders, like Spammers, to send mail without being traced.

There are other less know filtering services, but these are the ones used by most of the major mail systems (Yahoo, MSN, etc.).

As for Chief mail messages, nothing is getting to my mail servers so the problem is looking like it is still within an unstable Chief notification system.

With that in mind, I looked in my User Control Panel here on the forum and noticed that the Subscribed to Thread listing had collasped. While the mail might not be getting out, it could be because the forum is loosing it subscription listing for each user so the mail system doesn't know to whom mail should be sent.

[Helavagal]

Dan,
I am not getting them either.

[Tommy Blair]

I'm starting to get some of them now. Yea!

[robbc]

Spamcop is major Spam filtering service in the industry and is usually one of the earliest places a site will get listed if it is a true Spamming location.

SpamCop is only one of the problems. Their sender domain was (is) to localhost@localdomain. This will fail against most properly configured email servers (reseivers). Just a clarification to close the techincla aspect of this thread in case others on the forum every manage their own email servers and have problems.

Back to the gazillion tutorials on CA and trying to resolve POV raytracing smudge problems...

Robb

[Roger Rines]

SpamCop is only one of the problems.

Robb,
Neither Spamcop or ORDB are showing Chief as a Spam source and they are not filtering Chief email.

I think the email notification problem is tied to this forum loosing the thread subscriptions. Threads I was subscribe to last week, including those subscribed to on Saturday are no longer listed in my Control Panel as being subscribed today. If the threads I'm subscribe to today fall off when I look tomorrow, that will be confirmation that the source of the problem is the forum software not the email system.

[Larry Kumpost]

Somebody just fixed something because I just started getting notices for this specific thread.

[robbc]

Robb,
Neither Spamcop or ORDB are showing Chief as a Spam source and they are not filtering Chief email.

I think the email notification problem is tied to this forum loosing the thread subscriptions. Threads I was subscribe to last week, including those subscribed to on Saturday are no longer listed in my Control Panel as being subscribed today. If the threads I'm subscribe to today fall off when I look tomorrow, that will be confirmation that the source of the problem is the forum software not the email system.

That would indicate two seperate problems! Their email server is still misconfigured. I emailed a thread to myself and my logs indicate:

from ftp.chiefarchitect.com (localhost.localdomain [127.0.0.1]) by localhost.localdomain (8.13.1/8.13.1)
(from apache@localhost) by ftp.chiefarchitect.com (8.13.1/8.13.1/Submit) id k6OKOb3R000686; Mon, 24 Jul 2006 13:24:37 -0700

The error is 'apache@localhost' and 'localhost.localdomain'. Their server hostname, as far as their email server is concerned, is probably set to something like 'localhost.localdomain'. This also causes a warning on the recipient server's that the inital connection has a forged HELO component which contributes to the message being detected as SPAM.

Depending the scoring the receiving server uses (or if it denies all misconfigured senders) some people will receive messages from CA's web server and others will not. If complex scoring (SpamAssassin for example) is being used then this misconfiguration may cause messages to border on being detcted as SPAM based on the contents, local ISP bayes filters, etc. That is why some people get the mail sometimes.

As you mentioned SpamBot, etc., do NOT filter mail. They simply manage databases of domains that are supected of spamming or could be used for spamming purposes (others monitor for email server misconfigurations). Quite often these sites also assign a score instead of a boolean. Email recipient servers (ISP usually, unless you host your own email server) can then use the databases maintained by these sites to determin if the message should be considered SPAM or not. In most cases the databases are used to adjust a score that is locally calculated.

If CA does not fix the domain problem they will eventually appear on other lists that report sites that do not conform to various email standards. And that would be BAD since their SPAM score would go up cuasing more servers to reject their messages.

PS: Some forum software (and email lists) will autoamtically unsubscribe users if the recipient's server rejects too many emails (where too many can be as low as 1). This could also contribute to a user from being unsubscribed. The only way to know is to examine your server's mail logs and see if it is rejecting mail from CA.

[spencerdesign]

Hey,

I just got my first email notification in two weeks .

Sam

[Roger Rines]

Really good explaination Robb. I agree there can be more than one problem for very different reasons and still have the same results.

I just tried to get into my thread subscription list folder and found what seems to be an entire listing. However, all the notification checkboxes are not enabled. I've just enabled all of them and will check again tomorrow to see if they are still visible tomorrow so they will send notifications.