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  #61 (permalink)  
Old 18-03-2007, 03:28
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Hi Mark,

OK - I will open a ticket, but every other ticket I have opened has failed to fix this problem, so I hope this one will be different...

I would appreciate it if you could at least review the ticket yourself. I understand you can not make an ychanges yourself, but I feel no one is actually understanding the entire problem.

I will post the ticket number here once it is logged.

Regards

Paul
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  #62 (permalink)  
Old 18-03-2007, 03:54
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Hi,

Here is the ticket number.

[ #FKU-75559-740]: Mail messages not being delivered...

Please let me know if I have not explained the problem properly, or if there is anything else you need to know to fully understand the problem.

Regards

Paul
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  #63 (permalink)  
Old 19-03-2007, 07:55
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Hi Mark,

I've had no response to this ticket. If it is not possible for me to receive all e-mail then could someone please just tell me as I need to get this problem either fixed or start searching for a new host.

Regards

Paul
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  #64 (permalink)  
Old 19-03-2007, 11:13
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Hello Paul,

We are not able to customize spamassassin on the server to allow it to send messages that include words like V!agra and others. We will need to uninstall spamassassin from your VPS Hosting to allow all incoming emails to reach respective email accounts.

I am sorry to say but any further customization is not possible from our end. All our System Admins have tried to customize email service on your VPS Hosting but there's nothing else to be done from our end.
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  #65 (permalink)  
Old 19-03-2007, 11:27
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Hi Mark,

But I was told that we would be able to fully customise Spam Assassin with the VPS Hosting. It seems like an upgrade to a VPS Hosting was not such a good idea.

So can you tell me what is different to the configuration on VC10 and my VPS Hosting, as VC10 is allowing through more of the mail than my VPS Hosting?

Did you get a chance to look at the excel spreadsheet I attached to the ticket. You will see there are three messages that were not spam that I would have expected to receive (they are row numbers 12, 37 & 55). Why were these bounced as they do not contain any obvious spam references?

And can you explain the reason the subject lines are not getting amended on the mails that are arriving at gragnola.com, but they are on bourboncollection.com (I know I have set an atrificially low spam level on bourboncollection.com, but those above 6.5 on gragnola.com should be amended).

I have just had a response from support on the ticket that they have restarted the courier service on the VPS Hosting to fix the problem. I don't know if it will but I have said I will monitor it for another day.

If this turns out not to fix the problem, what is my position on getting a refund on the VPS Hosting account, as it obviously won't be any good for me.

Thanks

Paul

Last edited by pkearney; 19-03-2007 at 11:35.
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  #66 (permalink)  
Old 19-03-2007, 14:08
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Default A Suggestion

Hi,
This is just suggestion, and I apologise if I am off base here.

My previous ISP provided spam filtering that is user-configurable on a per mailbox basis.

When I first came to EUKhost, I asked about this because I assumed that this was a standard feature, but I was told that I would have to figure something out for myself.

In trying to do this, I discovered the spec for Exim filters. These are supposed to work as fine-tuning and in addition to Spam Assassin.

www. exim-new-users.co.uk/Exim-SpamAndVirusScanning.pdf
www. exim.org

While I haven't completely sorted out using Exim yet, I have written a PHP program that allows me to test my filtering on a per mailbox basis. It seems to be working, and I may just make this into a CRON job. I am also using EUKhost's standard Spam Assassin configuration, but I still have to filter nearly 100 messages a day.

Spam Assassin is excellent, but it doesn't deal with the problems that arise if you give one of your employees a mailbox, and then they do stupid things like Internet Gambling and Lifestyle quizzes.

My apologies once again if this is off topic and just noise.

Vickie
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  #67 (permalink)  
Old 19-03-2007, 14:18
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Thanks Vickie,

If you can provide some of your scripts to Paul then that would help us a lot to fulfill his requirements.
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  #68 (permalink)  
Old 20-03-2007, 08:11
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Hi Vickie,

Thanks for joining Not sure if your method will address my problem, but at this stage I am willing to try anything!!! However I'm far from a linux expert... so be gentle

Mark - I am afraid the changes support made yesterday made no differnece, I will be compiling a new spreadsheet shortly to send to them, but I don't think they really looked at the last one.....

I'm now getting to the point where I'll try un-installing Spam Assassin, as I am not convinced it is being casued by it (you didn't answer the question as to why the mail delivered is different between my VPS Hosting and server VC10?? when they both have SA running).

However spam filtering (not bouncing, just filtering) is important to me and my customers, so without it eUKhosts will be a less attractive option for me.

Finally, if this don't get a fix, where do I stand on getting a refund as I am still within the first month of my VPS Hosting.

Regards

Paul
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  #69 (permalink)  
Old 20-03-2007, 10:54
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Default Have you looked at Horde?

To get an idea of what I'm talking about, have you looked at the per-mailbox filtering in Horde? This is a point and click front end to regular expressions, which let you specify whether a subject, To, From or Contents of e-mails contain, or begin with words or letters. So, for example, anything Subject "Rolex" or "******" or "beginning with Vi". The reason I wrote my own program is because the filter front-end in Horde is not sophisticated enough. You might want to look there first.

My previous ISP had a similar front end on a per mailbox basis for users to configure. I ended up configuring it for my users, but it was point and click.

I'm happy to help where I can, but as far as my scripts are concerned, I think that if you aren't a PHP programmer you might find what I have to offer a bit hard to use. This is a fairly blunt tool for my personal testing and use, I don't rely on display or saving a list of deleted headers. My logic is a bit skewey as well, because I am not careful to avoid repeating the filtering.

I sent the following as a private message to eukhost.com last night, suggesting that some of the support staff might be able to refine these for you. Here, below are three functions. A button in an HTML form executes the function named "filterMailbox".

I use the regular expression tester here: www. quanetic.com/regex.php

Try the Horde filters and if this seems right to you, let me know and I'll include you in any developments I manage with exim.

Vickie


function filterMailbox()
{

$fp=fsockopen("your.mailserver.here", 110);
$line =fgets($fp, 1024);
fputs($fp, "USER yourusername@yourdomain.co.uk\r\n");
$line =fgets($fp, 1024);

if (StartsWith($line, "+OK"))
{
fputs($fp,"PASS userspassword\r\n");
$line =fgets($fp, 1024);
if (StartsWith($line, "+OK"))
{
$num = countMessages($fp);
$thisArray = fetchHeader($fp, $num);

echo (count($thisArray)." to be filtered<br>\n");
$k = 0;
for ($i = 0; $i < count($thisArray); $i++)
{
//I filter on To, From or Subject
$filterOnTo = trim($thisArray[$i][0]);
$filterOnFrom = trim($thisArray[$i][2]);
$filterOnSubject = trim($thisArray[$i][3]);



//This dates from when the e-bay server was broken into
if (preg_match("/^vebay/i", $filterOnTo))
{
echo ($i ."is a vebay email<br>");
$toBeDeleted[$k] = $i;
$k++;
}

if (preg_match("/^usurious-bugs/", $filterOnFrom))
{
echo ($i ."is a from usurious email<br>");
$toBeDeleted[$k] = $i;
$k++;
}


if (preg_match("/^\*SPAM\*/i", $filterOnSubject))
{
echo ($i ."is caught by XRBL email<br>");
$toBeDeleted[$k] = $i;
$k++;
}

}
echo (count($toBeDeleted)." to be deleted<br>\n");
for ($j = 0; $j < count($toBeDeleted); $j++)
{
echo($toBeDeleted[$j] ."is to be deleted <br>");
$g = trim($toBeDeleted[$j]);
$g += 1;
fputs($fp, "DELE $g\r\n");
$line =fgets($fp, 1024);
echo("result was ".$line."<br>");

}
}
}
fputs($fp, "QUIT\r\n");
$line3 = fgets($fp,1024);
echo("<br>".$line3);
fclose($fp);
}

function countMessages($fp)
{

$num = -5;
$line1 = "";

fputs($fp,"STAT\r\n");

$line1 =fgets($fp, 1024);
$a = explode(" ", $line1);

$num = (int)$a[1];
echo($num."<br>");

return $num;
}

function fetchHeader($fp, $num)
{
$c = 0;
for ($i = 1; $i <= $num; $i++)
{
fputs($fp, "TOP $i 0\r\n");
$line = fgets($fp, 12;
if ($line[0] == "+")
{
do
{
$line = fgets($fp, 1024);
$lines[$c] = $line;
$c++;
}while ($line[0] !=".");

for($d = 0; $d <= $c; $d++)
{
if ((stristr($lines[$d], "X-Envelope-To:")) || (stristr($lines[$d], "Envelope-To:"))) $result[0] = substr($lines[$d], strpos($lines[$d], ":")+1);
if (stristr($lines[$d], "Delivery-date:")) $result[1] = substr($lines[$d], strpos($lines[$d], ":")+1);
if (stristr($lines[$d], "From:")) $result[2] = substr($lines[$d], strpos($lines[$d], ":")+1);
if (stristr($lines[$d], "Subject:")) $result[3] = substr($lines[$d], strpos($lines[$d], ":")+1);
}
}
$messages[$i-1] = $result;
}
return $messages;
}
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  #70 (permalink)  
Old 23-03-2007, 08:41
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Hi Vickie,

Sorry for taking a while to respond. Thanks for the advice. I have had a look at Horde filters, and they might be useful for other functions for me, but my problem right now is that mail isn't getting delivered to the mail account before we even get to filter it. I've an open ticket with support, but I am at the point of giving up

My customers just won't accept the possibility (no matter how slight) that a genuine e-mail may not get to them. My plan is to do any filtering on the client end so they can check their own spam folders and make any decisions themselves. Unfortunatley right now, further to a coupld recent test I ran, off approx 150 e-mails I have had sent to me, 30+ are not delivered, the majority of which were spam, but 6 messages (4 from the same source) were all genuine and wanted.

Thanks for you help anyway.

Regards

Paul
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  #71 (permalink)  
Old 23-03-2007, 10:18
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We've also got cpanel - WHM on our helpdesk server which also controls our email service and so far we've never heard from anyone that they had sent emails and those didn't reach our mailboxes.

You are looking for various customizations in the service so problems will come and we cannot assign a dedicated person to monitor email service for a single VPS Hosting. You tell us one problem and we will fix that but if you ask why this particular email didn't reach destination mailbox then we wont be able to troubleshoot if there's no trace of that email in exim_mainlog. As I said previously that you can monitor exim_mainlog on your VPS Hosting and see which emails are coming. If there's no trace of a particular emails arrival then it means that it didn't reach your VPS Hosting and there's nothing we can do about it if that email didn't manage to reach your VPS Hosting.
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  #72 (permalink)  
Old 23-03-2007, 10:41
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Hi,

But have you looked at the last spreadsheet I posted under my support ticket???

Can you explain why e-mail will not reach my VPS Hosting but it does reach another eUKhosts server (VC10).

I have sent you a details list of all the e-mails that have not been delivered. If you could advise me how I check the EXIM logs I would do that, but I have a ticket open right now that hasn't been responded to since I sent the additional infomation requested on Wednesday Lunchtime.

I am not after any customisations - I just want the service to work the way it is described.

It is becomg obvious that a VPS Hosting will not do what I need it to do, so how can I cancel my account and get a refund (as it is within the first month)?

Regards

Paul
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  #73 (permalink)  
Old 19-04-2007, 18:52
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Having just trawled through this thread I have an idea that I've not seen mentioned so far — did anyone in VPS Hosting Support look at the /etc/antivirus.exim file (which I presume may well be installed on a VPS Hosting), because until a few days ago this was unknowingly discarding incoming and outgoing mail on my dedicated server (as it was pre-configured to reject many spam-related keywords/phrases 'out-of-the-box', as it were). I was lucky to spot what it was doing when I was studying the Exim_mainlog ...

Sorry if this is a red herring...!

Last edited by 247h; 21-10-2007 at 14:29. Reason: repair emdashes changed by database update to utf-8
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  #74 (permalink)  
Old 19-04-2007, 21:28
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Hi 247h,

You could be a life saver.... I had all but given up and am trialling another ISP as I write.

I really want to stick with eUKhosts, but just couldn't knowing that mail wasn't going to be 100%. I'll pass this info onto the VPS Hosting support team and see what they think. If you are right a large cold beer awaits should you ever find yourself in Northern Tuscany

I had a quick look at my VPS Hosting server via cpanel and file manager, but couldn't find any antivirus.exim files. I'm all new to linux hosting, so not sure if this is the correct way to look. Any pointers would be gratefully received.

Thanks a lot for trawling though all this thread Not for the faint hearted! I appreciate that you took the time!

Regards

Paul
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  #75 (permalink)  
Old 19-04-2007, 22:23
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Quote:
Originally Posted by pkearney View Post
...I had a quick look at my VPS Hosting server via cpanel and file manager, but couldn't find any antivirus.exim files.
You need to login to the root of your VPS Hosting (root@serverhostname.domain.tld) by SSH with something like PuTTY or preferably WinSCP (because I feel you'd prefer a Windows interface) — they're both free and you'll find WinSCP here: http://winscp.net/eng/index.php — just install it as any other Windows program on your local PC and then run the application. I'll give you a full rundown ...

You'll get a WinSCP login window and you'll pick New (on the right); enter your VPS Hosting hostname, user name (root) and root password then Save. That returns you to the former screen where you Login — it should connect you to the VPS Hosting and hopefully several seconds later, open a larger window (if all is OK).

You'll arrive in an Explorer/File Manager-type interface with your local machine in the left panel and the server in the right panel; you'll be in the /root folder. You need to go up a level to /<root>< root > where you'll find the /etc folder you're looking for (along with all the other top level folders like /bin, /boot, /dev, /home ...). Navigate down below the long list of folders within /etc and if it's there in the list of files, antivirus.exim will be near the top (alphabetically). On mine it's nearly 16K. Right-click to open a menu and choose Edit — it's a text file and I doubt you'll not understand its content. You can comment out any line you don't want using a # in front. (You can copy this file to your local PC before you make any edit — just drag'n'drop in left panel).

If you scroll down to:
### [End]

# START
# Filters all incoming and outgoing mail

...If yours is anything like mine you will then find a large number of lines of filter parameters that can be commented out selectively before saving the file.

If there's very little in the file below the [End] marker then you have no other parameters set than at the top of the file (and I suggest you leave those alone).

I'll be interested to hear if this was the cause of your difficulties and I hope it will be — how's your evaluation going elsewhere? If you have another spare domain I'd be happy for you to test it on my dedicated server ...

Late edit: I've only just remembered that the WinSCP interface style is selectable between Norton Commander and regular Windows Explorer — what I explained above relates to the Norton Commander layout.
</root>
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Last edited by 247h; 20-04-2007 at 09:53.
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  #76 (permalink)  
Old 20-04-2007, 20:05
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Thanks Gadge,

Opened a ticket with VPS Hosting support and they have got back to me saying there is no A/V software filtering on a VPS Hosting by default.... I've just followed your (very thorough - thanks!) instructions on finding my antivirus.exim file and surprise surprise there is one there! Now I am just a little disappointed with VPS Hosting support as I asked them a second time when they came back with a simple answer if there was any possibility it could be your thoughts and they said there is no A/V software on a VPS Hosting.

Well I guess this might not be classed as software, but it could definitely be bouncing mail!

I'm going to have a look at it in more detail now - think I might just comment out all the filters for now.

I'm going to setup a temp forward from my current main mail account (outside eUKhosts with Fasthosts at the moment) and get it to forward to a FH pop account and one on my VPS Hosting and see what happens. In the past when I've tried this, in a day I've seen that some messages arrive at the Fasthosts pop that never arrive at the my VPS Hosting one.

The other host I've been testing is Hostgator. Right now I've just gone for a reseller account to try things out (they seem to run a very similar setup to eUKhosts). Not sure their reseller account is the way forward for mission critical stuff but it is pretty cheap. Me and a friend started to talk about clubbing together and possibly going for a dedicated box, but as you can see I'm no linux expert!

Another kind eUKhost customer setup a test POP account for me on their server and I couls see an improvement in that only a couple of messages didn't get through, and these all seemed to be spam, so I thought it had to be something server specific.

Thanks for the offer of trying out on your dedicated server. I'll see how I go with this test first. I'm happy with the product and flexibility of eUKhosts, but just not blown away with the support I've received with this particular issue (they have been good with other questions though).

Fingers crossed...

Paul
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  #77 (permalink)  
Old 20-04-2007, 20:20
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Hello Paul,

There was nothing as such in antivirus.exim file but I've got all rules removed from it. Please check if things have changed or not as you had no antivirus installed on your VPS Hosting so it wont make any difference.

Gadge had antivirus on his dedicated server so it would have made a difference for him.
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  #78 (permalink)  
Old 20-04-2007, 20:30
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Hi Mark,

Thanks for keeping up with this thread. I realise you are probably near the end of your teather with it as well! I'm not trying to put down eUKhosts here, just trying to get to the bottom of the problem.

You can see that I am clutching at straws, so when I see things that _might_ be causing it I do get a little excited...

I'll monitor it for another day and report back.

Regards

Paul
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  #79 (permalink)  
Old 20-04-2007, 21:03
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I personally did one important change on your VPS Hosting as I never logged in your VPS Hosting till now. I hardly work on servers now but when needed high level work then I find no solution besides me doing it.

Let me know after 24 hours as I think I have fixed your problem today but I will let you know what I did if your response is positive
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  #80 (permalink)  
Old 22-04-2007, 19:10
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Hi Mark,

I think you've done it.... I've monitored for 1 1/2 days and 65 out of 65 mails delivered

Including some messages that were failing before so this is a success if you ask me...

All looks good to me so far, I'll move my main mail over now and let you know how I get on after a few more days, but all indications are good.

So what did you have to change?

Regards

Paul
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