SSL Email Server Timing Out - UK Web Hosting

**OliverTreend** · #1 (**permalink**) 22-05-2009, 09:56

Hi

I've been having problems with the email server on Victorious for several months now.

Basically, upon opening Thunderbird, I can see and read all of my emails in my Inbox just as I would expect.

However, the problems come when I change to a different folder - for example Drafts or Sent. When I open any other folder, I can't open or read any of the messages. When I click on an email, it sits and waits - and the hourglass cursor appears. After a few minutes of Thunderbird hanging, I get the message: "Connection to server victorious.eukhost.com timed out."

I have a reseller account, and this happens on all of my websites on the Victorious server. I should also mention that I use IMAP4 and SSL to connect.

To alleviate the problem in the past, I simply used to open up a live chat technical support session and ask for the mail server to be restarted on Victorious. This used to fix the problem, until it started happening 2 or 3 times per week. At that point, I was pretty frustrated! I shouldn't have to talk to technical support every time I want to read my emails!

So I told technical support about the problems with the server. They did some testing and came back saying there was nothing wrong with it! Turns out they were testing an unsecured connection to the server, rather than the SSL connection that I was using.

I'm really not happy with the mail server. The technician simply suggested that I turned SSL encryption off in Thunderbird. Surely that defeats the point of offering SSL encryption in the first place? I don't particularly want passwords and emails flying over the Internet unencrypted.

I don't hear of anybody else having these problems. But it's really frustrating to find that nobody at eUKhost seems to be listening to me!

I don't particularly want to use POP3 - as I access my email from several machines. And I don't particularly want to disable SSL either.

I have attached a screenshot of my Thunderbird client during the process of trying to read an email from my Drafts folder. It is showing the timeout error message.

Edit: I didn't realise that the uploaded photos get resized. Here's a full-size screenshot of my Thunderbird client. http://www.divshare.com/img/7455624-32c.png

Please can anybody help me? This is a pretty annoying problem!

Thank you.

Oliver

**bedotnet** · #2 (**permalink**) 22-05-2009, 10:36

Some of my clients have reported the same thing recently, i was thinking it was a tiscali issue though.

As i havent had the same experience on KeConnect, Demon or O2...

**OliverTreend** · #3 (**permalink**) 22-05-2009, 10:49

I have Eclipse Internet - thankfully I have nothing to do with Tiscali!

My sister used to receive similar problems - but isn't on Tiscali or Eclipse.
And my boyfriend sometimes gets these problems too, but he's on BT.

Looks like the problem might be server-side? :-/

**Cristiano** · #4 (**permalink**) 22-05-2009, 20:06

Hi Oliver,

I have re-installed the SSL certificate on the server Victorious. Try using the server hostname for incoming and outgoing mail servers. I am able to connect to server with IMAP and SSL now

**OliverTreend** · #5 (**permalink**) 23-05-2009, 20:34

That's excellent - thank you!
Looks like that did the trick.

**Cristiano** · #6 (**permalink**) 23-05-2009, 20:54

Quote:

Originally Posted by OliverTreend

That's excellent - thank you!
Looks like that did the trick.

You are Welcome

**OliverTreend** · #7 (**permalink**) 27-05-2009, 19:30

Bad news

It looks like the server's playing up again.
I'm getting exactly the same problems again - the server seems to be timing out when changing folders and opening emails that aren't in the Inbox.

Is there anything else that can be done in order to try and fix this?
I'm positive that this isn't a confguration problem with my Thunderbird client, because I never used to have problems until the last few months.
Any ideas?

Many thanks
Oliver

Rock · #8 (**permalink**) 28-05-2009, 07:50

Hi Oliver,

There are several reasons for the timeouts appearing in several email clients. Most probably the number/size of emails present in that particular folder too are responsible to cause the email client to timeout when connecting & fetching/retrieving data from the server. In your case, does that folder contain many emails or is huge in size?

You can try the below given steps to speed up your email client a bit..

Launch the ThunderBird Email client.
Click on Tools > Account Settings.
Under the IMAP account you'd find "Offline & Disk Space".
Check the box next to "Make the messages in my Inbox available when I am working offline."
Doing so will download the messages (headers + body) from the server to your local hard drive (similarly to POP3), making the messages to load faster in your email client, while maintaining the advantages of IMAP.
You can also select other folders to be available offline. Right click on the folder you wish to make available offline, select it's Properties & then enable the Offline tab.
As a result of these changes, you’d get the speed of POP, multiple platform sync; your messages stay on the server & are backed up on your hard drive as well..

If you continue to face the problem, would it be fine if we migrate your account to one of our other/new Linux servers this upcoming weekend?

**OliverTreend** · #9 (**permalink**) 31-05-2009, 13:17

Rock

Thank you for your advice - I didn't know about that 'caching' functionality of Thunderbird with IMAP4.

After enabling offline use in Thunderbird, I could access my emails a lot faster. However, there was still the odd problem with accessing my emails. The server still timed out quite often.

Now, after not having checked my emails for approx 2 days, I opened Thunderbird and it gave me a warning that the server's SSL certificate had expired! Looks like it expired about 13 hours ago, according to this error message I was greeted with. Take a look: http://www.divshare.com/img/7530409-c98.PNG

Upon confirming that I want to use the expired certificate, I was told that the email server had timed out again, as per usual. *sigh*

I only have 313 emails in my Inbox, 6 in Drafts, 181 in Sent, 7 in Junk (emptied daily), and nothing in Deleted (emptied upon closing Thunderbird). Surely that's not too much for the email server to cope with...? I mean, Thunderbird can happily manage several thousand emails via Gmail IMAP! Oh, and most emails don't have attachments, so are usually no more than 10kb in size.

Come on, what's going on!? Nobody has given me a straight answer yet. The 'victorious' IMAP server has worked flawlessly ever since having your hosting package. But recently it hasn't been working properly for the past few months - I have yet to even know what's going wrong, let alone have a functional email service!

This simply isn't acceptable, and isn't the service I've come to expect from eUKhost!

Somebody please help me!

Thank you
Oliver

Rock · #10 (**permalink**) 31-05-2009, 13:53

Hello Oliver,

The SSL certificate is being renewed & would be installed in the next few minutes.

**OliverTreend** · #11 (**permalink**) 31-05-2009, 14:01

Quote:

Originally Posted by Rock

Hello Oliver,

The SSL certificate is being renewed & would be installed in the next few minutes.

That's excellent! Just opened Thunderbird again and it all seems to be working correctly. It seems to be responding as fast as it always used to... much faster than it has been recently.

Thank you very much!

Rock · #12 (**permalink**) 31-05-2009, 14:02

A new SSL certificate has been installed on Victorious. Please let us know if we can migrate your account on a new server, if you continue to face the timeout problem with IMAP.

**OliverTreend** · #13 (**permalink**) 31-05-2009, 14:03

Quote:

Originally Posted by Rock

A new SSL certificate has been installed on Victorious. Please let us know if we can migrate your account on a new server, if you continue to face the timeout problem with IMAP.

Thanks a lot, Rock.
Everything seems to be functioning as expected!

Rock · #14 (**permalink**) 31-05-2009, 14:03

Quote:

Originally Posted by OliverTreend

That's excellent! Just opened Thunderbird again and it all seems to be working correctly. It seems to be responding as fast as it always used to... much faster than it has been recently.

Thank you very much!

Ahh didnt get to see this post in time

You're welcome.. We're glad that everything is working fine for you again ! Good luck..