XF 2.0 Board not sending email

[Kainzo]

Board stopped sending out emails (using default mailing style)

I cant even log into my board now because I cant get my admin 2fa email.

I know that I can change the database key somewhere to allow logins without 2FA which makes things really less secure.
Any thoughts?

 

[spider]

Shared hosting ? If so ask your host if there's anything relevant in the logs, just tell them your site has stopped sending mail. Hopefully if they won't look at the logs they will provide them so you can see if there is some kind of clue as to the cause.

It is also (possible) they might of changed something at their end too which has caused this, but please take a moment to stop and think if you have made any changes at all (even something unrelated) lately to your community, perhaps a new addon or something along those lines.


Regarding access, well you are going to need it unless you want to wait for your host to reply (depends what they say , if its something they can fix aka: server config has changed etc) you could temporarily turn it off via adding this to your config file:

$config['enableTfa'] = false;

If/when you decide you might need to add that line, check its not already there (with true set), if so you simply need to change true to false. Not sure if you wanted that but thought you best have it so you know "how to" if you need to.


Hope that is a little helpp to start with.

 

[Kainzo]

Shared hosting ? If so ask your host if there's anything relevant in the logs, just tell them your site has stopped sending mail. Hopefully if they won't look at the logs they will provide them so you can see if there is some kind of clue as to the cause.

It is also (possible) they might of changed something at their end too which has caused this, but please take a moment to stop and think if you have made any changes at all (even something unrelated) lately to your community, perhaps a new addon or something along those lines.


Regarding access, well you are going to need it unless you want to wait for your host to reply (depends what they say , if its something they can fix aka: server config has changed etc) you could temporarily turn it off via adding this to your config file:

$config['enableTfa'] = false;

If/when you decide you might need to add that line, check its not already there (with true set), if so you simply need to change true to false. Not sure if you wanted that but thought you best have it so you know "how to" if you need to.


Hope that is a little helpp to start with.

I manage / run this dedicated box, so its not shared hosting.

Nothing that I know of changed, I just stop receiving emails and none of my users with 2FA can log in. Been running this forum for 7 years.
Some things that may have caused this... I sent 80k~ emails out to my users that were signed up for email and I may have received a TON of bounces, could this set off alarms?
How would I check this?

 

[Kainzo]

Anyone else?

 

[TPerry]

Check with your host. With that number of emails, especially if you haven't done it before, they may have blocked the ability to send email via an automated system thinking it was a malware burst of sending. Many hosts monitor for this type of behavior and if seeing it suddenly they have a system in place to block outbound mail so that the IP doesn't end up blacklisted, or their IP block doesn't.

 

[Ozzy47]

Following the troubleshooting guide here will identify the cause of most common issues: https://xenforo.com/community/resources/email-troubleshooting-guide.5086/

 

[TPerry]

Following the troubleshooting guide here will identify the cause of most common issues: https://xenforo.com/community/resources/email-troubleshooting-guide.5086/

When something has been working and then stops, odds are it's not a configuration issue but a blocking issue I've found. If he hasn't been sending that number of outbound emails he could have tripped an automated alarm process that would block all outbound port access.

 

[Ozzy47]

It is still a good idea to troubleshoot instead of guessing blindly.

 

[TPerry]

That's why he was recommended to make a simple inquiry of his host first and foremost if nothing has changed and it has been working prior to that and not spend a bunch of time troubleshooting something that may not be an issue that he can resolve.

 

[Ozzy47]

Same as was the recommendation to troubleshoot, while sitting there waiting for the host to answer, it does not hurt to use the time to do so.

 

[Kainzo]

Following the troubleshooting guide here will identify the cause of most common issues: https://xenforo.com/community/resources/email-troubleshooting-guide.5086/

I'll do this now.

Just to note: I am self-hosting at DigitalOcean. I have a feeling that the amount of emails I send has finally caught up and my bounce rate may be aorund 20-30%. I'll have to clean it all up but I'm so dumb when it comes to emailers I dont even know what to do. haha...

 

[CoZmicShReddeR]

Sounds kind of silly but I was working on my /admin.php?options/groups/emailOptions/ and Chrome put my website password in my email password and I saved it and didn't realized what happened my emails were not going out then after a few days of digging around I caught Chrome putting my website password in the Email password. Once I got it straightened out I could test send emails again everything was fine

 

[Ozzy47]

I'll do this now.

Just to note: I am self-hosting at DigitalOcean. I have a feeling that the amount of emails I send has finally caught up and my bounce rate may be aorund 20-30%. I'll have to clean it all up but I'm so dumb when it comes to emailers I dont even know what to do. haha...

It is quite possible you have hit a limit somewhere as Tracy Perry said.

 

[Kainzo]

Sounds kind of silly but I was working on my /admin.php?options/groups/emailOptions/ and Chrome put my website password in my email password and I saved it and didn't realized what happened my emails were not going out then after a few days of digging around I caught Chrome putting my website password in the Email password. Once I got it straightened out I could test send emails again everything was fine

thats interesting, though I will say that I am using the BASIC mailer function that comes with my linux distro, im not going through another mailer (i probably should change this asap)

It is quite possible you have hit a limit somewhere as Tracy Perry said.

Ill go through the guide, is there a quick way to find out if i did?


From the guide:
Its affecting ALL users on ALL emails (mass target'd email to confirmation emails)
I'm using Xf2 and the guide is for XF1 is that an issue?

 

[Kainzo]

It is quite possible you have hit a limit somewhere as Tracy Perry said.

Actually, it looks like there's a bounce to my bounce email retriever...

This is the mail system at host herocraftonline.com.

I'm sorry to have to inform you that your message could not
be delivered to one or more recipients. It's attached below.

For further assistance, please send mail to postmaster.

If you do so, please include this problem report. You can
delete your own text from the attached returned message.

The mail system

 

[Kainzo]

Messages from 198.199.70.96 temporarily deferred due to
user complaints - 4.16.55.1; see
I'm blowing up my IP for now.... hopefully that fixes it and then im going to prune my user list.

 

[TPerry]

That usually means that you have been blacklisted by the recipient service. Yahoo is almost as bad as Hotmail on mail delivery unless you are one of the major players.
I've got a sneaking suspicion you are on several blacklists (or local blocklists) for some of the big mail services (Google, Hotmail, Yahoo, etc).
Digital Ocean is a usual spammers haven and I'm pretty sure they don't have a monitoring service built in to check for excessive outbound emails - that's why so many of their IP's are on blacklists.
With the return you got, it indicates that email IS going out - but it's being kicked back to you as a deferred/rejected response.

Try sending a message to user TPerry (I just signed up expecting to get email confirmation but didn't) from your ACP and we can see if it goes through. That will go to an email server hosted by myself.

 

[Kainzo]

That usually means that you have been blacklisted by the recipient service. Yahoo is almost as bad as Hotmail on mail delivery unless you are one of the major players.
I've got a sneaking suspicion you are on several blacklists (or local blocklists) for some of the big mail services (Google, Hotmail, Yahoo, etc).
Digital Ocean is a usual spammers haven and I'm pretty sure they don't have a monitoring service built in to check for excessive outbound emails - that's why so many of their IP's are on blacklists.
With the return you got, it indicates that email IS going out - but it's being kicked back to you as a deferred/rejected response.

Try sending a message to user TPerry (I just signed up expecting to get email confirmation but didn't) from your ACP and we can see if it goes through. That will go to an email server hosted by myself.

Doing that now... also what process do you suggest for me to get removed? =/

 

[TPerry]

Doing that now... also what process do you suggest for me to get removed? =/

And it came in just fine.

My mail system has a greylisting ability and you didn't hit it nor any of the major blacklists - so it looks like it's mail server specific.



You will have to go to each of the major mail providers and find how to get off their blocked list. Looks like Yahoo may be a temporary deal, but HotMail and possibly Google may not be. If you have many that have ISP emails, you could also be blocked there.
This is why it's not recommended to do a mass mail using the ACP for a newsletter/mailing list. It's much preferable to use a service that is specifically designed for that as it will help keep your main emails from being blocked.

It could also be a GMail issue, as it looks like you are using GMail for your mail sending?

 

[Kainzo]

And it came in just fine.
View attachment 186267
My mail system has a greylisting ability and you didn't hit it nor any of the major blacklists - so it looks like it's mail server specific.

View attachment 186268

You will have to go to each of the major mail providers and find how to get off their blocked list. Looks like Yahoo may be a temporary deal, but HotMail and possibly Google may not be. If you have many that have ISP emails, you could also be blocked there.
This is why it's not recommended to do a mass mail using the ACP for a newsletter/mailing list. It's much preferable to use a service that is specifically designed for that as it will help keep your main emails from being blocked.

It could also be a GMail issue, as it looks like you are using GMail for your mail sending?

I'm just bouncing the failed emails to that gmail account, I'm using just the ACP / default sending method.
I was thinking of setting up AWS and Sendyco so that I can get this done better. I also need to prune more of my dead emails but I'm unsure how to do this now that I'm getting global bounces.

appreciate you helping me with this.
I think Yahoo,Gmail and Hotmail have me on spam so I need to figure out where to get off those lists... without changing my entire domain....