How to setup bounce mail correctly?

Alan_SP · 4th February 2012, 15:47

I'm testing this and sending mail works fine, but a bit slow (I wait for few minutes for mail to arrive, but this is ok).

The thing is, how can I check my settings for bounce mail?

What I did is this:

I have dedicated server with Plesk. I created special mail account for bounced mail, and I use it for SMTP sending (that works, as I mentioned already). This side is fine.

I entered information in DragonByte Tech: vBMail - Bounced Mail Settings that would use this account, for host I tried localhost, 127.0.0.1, mail.myserver.com (exact address).

I tested port by logging to server and running command elnet localhost 143 with result:
telnet localhost 143
Trying 127.0.0.1...
Connected to localhost.
Escape character is '^]'.
* OK [CAPABILITY IMAP4rev1 UIDPLUS CHILDREN NAMESPACE THREAD=ORDEREDSUBJECT THREAD=REFERENCES SORT QUOTA IDLE ACL ACL2=UNION STARTTLS] Courier-IMAP ready. Copyright 1998-2004 Double Precision, Inc. See COPYING for distribution information.
Connection closed by foreign host.

This means it's ok and it is on port 143.

I'm sent some test mails on this mail address, just to test bounced mail (as I set it to manual handling). I also set account in my mail program, using IMAP. In my mail account I see mail I sent for testing purposes. It's there. I see mail in webmail program on my server.

But I couldn't see any mail when I use Bounced Mail List option. I played with dates too, I tried everything.

Mail is on my mail server, I see it with my mail program, but I couldn't see it with vBMail. What I'm doing wrong? As I understand, if I see mail there with my mail program and webmail on my server, vBmail should see it too. So, it's some option, or bug, not really sure, but couldn't see my mail for testing bounced mail.

---------- Post added at 16:47 ---------- Previous post was at 16:32 ----------

Ok, found the answer.

Mail is collected by cron job, when I search for mail, it searches only mail collected with cron job, not directly from server. I needed to run cron job manually and it collected my test mails.

That confused me.

Everything works now.

0 Comment(s)

Ozzy47 · 4th February 2012, 15:57

Ok cool, glad it is sorted.

0 Comment(s)

Belazor · 4th February 2012, 16:06

Aye, it would be network and resource intensive to open a connection to the mail server each time, so we set it up with a cron job

Also, the reason why it takes a few minutes for mails to arrive is because mail is sent via the vBulletin MailQueue system. This was done because some hosts place a limitation upon the "mails per hour" you're allowed to send, as well as the fact that page loading disruptions (such as connection loss, or PHP timeout on the server) could prevent mails from large mailing lists to be sent out. With the queue system, it's extremely quick to add a new email to large amounts of users to the queue, and then subsequent page loads will clear the queue bit by bit

0 Comment(s)

Alan_SP · 5th February 2012, 07:05

Yes, when I realized it's using cron job, there was no problems. Could you maybe add button to manually run this particular cron job on screen where we check for bounced mail? Or at least mention it somewhere on that screen or in the settings, that it needs cron job to run before we could see any mails on IMAP account we use? Stressing this on any (and the best thing is on all) of this places will help many.

And certainly mention it in the manual (I'm just now looking at it, there's no mention about cron job). This is pretty important information when people test this mod.

About slow sending of emails, I read somewhere that cron image is in footer (I think Maria mentioned it in her mod), that it needs to be there that mail could be sent. After I remembered this, it sorted this out. I just make a click or two and mail is sent right away. Maybe if you mention this information in manual too, for people who test your mod? Just so they are informed why they aren't receiving test emails right away?

This also helped me to find out thing about cron job for checking bounced mail, because I checked what cron jobs are there. When I saw it, I ran it manually.

Anyway, maybe that you write in manuals of all mods special chapter if testing them needs special requirements? This mod needs page clicks for cron job to run, because cron job doesn't run at all if there's no one who's using forum. Some other mods might also require some special conditions to be met that are solved on live sites. Just to make testing much easier.

0 Comment(s)