Mail delivery failed

[sbalfour]

Trying to get the automatic email order receipt to work hasn't half been a pain.

First I had to change my outgoing SMTP to 'localhost' (I had to search the forum to find that out) then becuse I'm with WorldPay I have had to include resultY.html and resultC.html to help Actinic work.

Now after a short period of everything working fine, all of a sudden I get 4 different order email order receipts bouncing back to me with the following message:

unrouteable mail domain "theCustomersEmailAddress.com"

Now I have emailed these addresses before so I know that they work. If they were being bounced back because their mail server thought it was spam would the message be the one above?

Anyone had the same problem?

Thanks for any help

sbalfour

[s-j-r]

Steven,

Why not mail then and ask?

Email SPAM and virus checkers are so prevalent nowadays, my ISP tells me it is going to filter my incoming mail !!!!!, I am not sure what error messages (as a sender) that I would now expect to see.

It is also (sadly) becoming a frequent occurence that some mail hubs are failing to accept inward messages because they have got clogged up by SPAM or Mail bombs.

Hey! thats what they call progress

Steve

[sbalfour]

I don't mean to moan. I love Actinic, I really do. And I don't think this problem is caused by Actinic.

Whats puzzling me is that one of the emails is where we are forwarding all our orders to, and this has been working fine untill a couple bounced back last night.

This is why I don't think its a spam checker bouncing the emails.

sbalfour

[Nadeem]

Hi there,

Looking at the error log produced by actinic:
http://www.glassblockoutlet.co.uk/acatalog/error.err

It looks like the hosting company has turned on SMTP Authentication, which sadly Actinic does not support at the moment.

In the error you get the following:

Date and Time = 2004/03/16 18:22, Internal Errors = Error returned from SMTP server (4: Authentication turned on in your email client.

The next full release of Actinic will support SMTP Authentication. If you hosting company supports SendMail, then Norman has written a patch for Actinic to use this. Here it is:
http://www.rouxel.cwc.net/V6(V5)-Usi...eadoOfSMTP.txt(

Kind Regards

[sbalfour]

These are the errors I was getting before I changed my outgoing mail SMTP to 'localhost'.

Notice the date is the 16th (before I changed to 'localhost'). These new errors happened last night (31/03/2004) after everything had been running smoothly.

Thanks

sbalfour

[Mike Hughes]

Try resending them, it might just have been a temporary error in the SMTP server.

From my experience I'd say that it doesn't sound like a spam filter at work.

Mike

[sbalfour]

Thanks Mike, I think you could be right. I've sent an email to my hosting company about this problem and I am waiting for a reply.

We have resent the emails last night and they seem to have worked (no more emails bounced back).

I just hope this isn't a regular thing otherwise it might be best for us to send the emails manually.

Thanks again

sbalfour

[sbalfour]

I'm hosted with Compila whos support team originally advised me to use localhost in Actinic outgiong SMTP, here is there original email:

dear Sir/Madam,
Yes, when the smtp server in Actinic is set to localhost.
We have many users using this.

Regards
The Support Team
Compila Limited

Now I've just received this email from their support team:

Dear Sir/MAdam,
We do not supply SMTP so using our ssytem to ssend you email
is not supported, We reccomend that you use your ISP for
the sending of your email.

Regards
The Support Team
Compila Limited
aka ssizler

??? Whats going on

Anyone had any problems with http://www.compila.com/ ?

sbalfour

[NormanRouxel]

We have many users using this.

Well, they'll now have many users complaining / leaving.

Did you refer them to their own earlier answer and see what they now say. It looks like you got a "stock" reply there.

If they've really turned off SMTP then you could investigate my Mail::Mailer patch. See www.rouxel.cwc.net/actinicstuff.html
Note that you should first ask your host (good luck - i see an infinite loop possibility here) if they have installed the Perl module Mail::Mailer installed.

Norman

PS you're not alone in this. This Forum is littered with posts about ISP's who've changed a bit of their core functionality without bothering to warn or even tell their customers what they're about to do / have done. Personally I'd vote with my feet.

PPS Just looked on Compila's site and they're actually selling Actinic. Version 5 dated 2001, though. Let's hope their security patches aren't the same vintage!

[sbalfour]

Thanks Norman, I have replied to them with their earlier answer, they seem to be taking a bit longer to email me back.

I've been reading this post http://community.actinic.com/showthr...&threadid=6315 and Steve Read (s-j-r) seems to have had some problems with compila, used your patch but had to modify it.

[s-j-r]

Steven,

I do use Compila, and Norman's patch (slightly amended to not use Mail::Mailer but to use Sendmail directly) works fine.

Compila publish the sendmail location on the user frontpage control screen, and that is what I use.

Hosts that change the rules, affecting Live sites deserve to lose all their customers - my site isn't live yet, but I am listening carefully on this forum to work out who else I might use later on.

Perhaps Actinic should strongly consider removing Compila from their list of approved sites, featured on Actinic's own site - thats the only reason I chose them in the first place !

Email if you want sympathy, help or other.....

Steve

[sbalfour]

Steve/Norman,

Thanks for the patch, I've added it to my setup and it seems to be working fine when I tested it.

Compila got back to me about using localhost:

Dear Sir/MAdam,

This function allows Actinic Catalogue to send email
via a special mail setup on the servers.

We do not allow the sending of email via a third party
mail program and reccommend that you use your ISP for this.

Regards
The Support Team
Compila Limited

Still dosen't explain why some of my Actinic emails were bouncing back to me but of course I've email them back with that question (never mind leaving, they'll end up telling me to go!).

How long till Actinic 7 is released?

sbalfour

[cdicken]

Not too long now. It will be coming out in the first half of the year.

[sbalfour]

I'm still having problems with email order receipt emails going missing. About 1 in 5 email order receipts don't get sent out. I am hosted with Compila and using Normans patch (slightly ammended, see above) to send the orders receipts through sendmail. I have a World Pay account and have fixed the problem with having to return to the shop from World Pay to receive an order receipt (see this post ).

My version of Actinic is 6.1.3.0.0.0.D.H.B.A , and I don't want to really upgrade untill I know I have to.

It is vital that the order receipt emails are sent automatically. Can anyone help?

Thanks

sbalfour

[Mike Hughes]

I'm using 6.1.3 with Norman's patch and haven't had a problem.

In general, if the odd email goes missing then it's usually down to the email gateway being overloaded and nothing to do with Actinic.

I'm not sure really what kind of help you're looking for here?

Mike