Email Issues

[Mike Hughes]

The other things I'd try is:

Using the www.sportsballshop.co.uk site:

1. Check your contact email address within Actinic is set to 'sales@sportsxxxxshop.co.uk'
2. Send yourself an email from actinic to something like 'admin@sportsxxxxshop.co.uk'

Where xxxx=ball

This should eliminate any relaying concerns so you might get a different error mesage.

I'd also try doing the same using smtp authentication.

Mike

[Duncan Rounding]

Now try uploading their store in Test Mode and try it.

If that fails then try doing a purge and refresh (in Test Mode) and Check delete perl scripts. Make sure you backup any script changes though as this will restore the scripts to the originals.

[Big Game Hunter]

Hi Mike / Duncan

I am trying both your ideas now. Will keep you posted.

[Big Game Hunter]

tried both those ideas. No change.

That's irritating. was hoping that would fix it.

[Big Game Hunter]

hang on. I was testing the wrong site. I found the test area and this is interesting:

General Script Error
Error: Unsupported index version for "../acatalog/test/acatalog/oldprod.fil". Expected 258. Found 14128.

Not sure what that means. I have done a web purge in test mode as well on this.

[Big Game Hunter]

latest reply from Actinic

This is the latest reply from Actinic if it helps:

Hi Shannon,

I have tested your snapshot with my test server settings and I can get emails to my email address. I have also looked at your error log online and have found the follow issues with it.

Program = ORDERSCR, Program version = 22690 , HTTP Server = Apache/1.3.41 , Return code = 999 , Date and Time = 2010/08/08 12:03, Internal Errors = Error returned from SMTP server (3: 5.5.4 <jzMZjYQ1sK8ftE+JbWqDFPy88Sl09jiQuImYERI=>... Domain name required for sender address jzMZjYQ1sK8ftE+JbWqDFPy88Sl09jiQuImYERI=
)
Program = ORDERSCR, Program version = 22690 , HTTP Server = Apache/1.3.41 , Return code = 999 , Date and Time = 2010/08/08 12:03, Internal Errors = Error returned from SMTP server (3: 5.5.4 <jzMZjYQ1sK8ftE+JbWqDFPy88Sl09jiQuImYERI=>... Domain name required for sender address jzMZjYQ1sK8ftE+JbWqDFPy88Sl09jiQuImYERI=
)
Program = SearchSc, Program version = 22655 , HTTP Server = Apache/1.3.41 , Return code = 999 , Date and Time = 2010/08/09 15:14, Internal Errors = Error opening configuration file ../acatalog/prompt.fil. No such file or directory

Basically your web server needs to have relaying enabled on their server for actinic to generate the auto generate order confirmation emails. This has been confirmed with my team leader and dev.


I have contacted fasthosts and they have confirmed that this is working on the webserver. Again we going in circles.

[Mike Hughes]

Basically your web server needs to have relaying enabled on their server for actinic to generate the auto generate order confirmation emails. This has been confirmed with my team leader and dev.

I'm not sure this is the answer.

Relaying is the process which allows an smtp server to send emails from a domain it isnt on. If you were sending emails from 'shannon(at)sportsballshop.co.uk' via the actinictesting.co.uk smtp server then that would be relaying. Sending the same email from an smtp server on sportsballshop.co.uk wouldn't need relaying. That's why we keep asking you to make sure the email address you're using is 'on domain'.

On the other hand if you're sending email via the fasthosts smtp server then that is relaying but normally the host keeps a list of domains it hosts and allows those to send emails. AFAIK this is what fasthosts do as they say this:

To prevent spam being sent through our webservers there are certain restrictions in place when sending email from webscripts.

1) Email must be sent to, or from, an email address hosted by Fasthosts. An email address hosted by Fasthosts is not the same as a domain name hosted by Fasthosts. If your domain's MX record points to another email provider, it will not count as being hosted by Fasthosts.

2) All outbound email must be routed through our outgoing email servers or it will not be delivered, it is not possible to send email from a script directly to a third party SMTP server.

3) We limit the number of emails you can send in any thirty second period and any ten minute period.

This helps us to prevent spammers from using our servers and improves the service we can provide to you.

Outgoing mail servers

All mail scripts running on Fasthosts webservers should use either smtp.fasthosts.co.uk or 127.0.0.1 as the outgoing mail server. Please consult the documentation for your scripting language or component to find out how to set this correctly.

127.0.0.1 is the same as 'localhost' so that shouldn't be a problem.

Your MX records point back to your domain and fasthosts livemail servers so that all looks OK too.

The things that tells me this could well be a red herring are:

1. Normally, the smtp rejected response for relaying gives the email address its rejecting. In this case it looks like random characters.

2. Didn't you say the test site worked on fasthosts server? It couldn't do that if there was a fundamental problem with the email servers.

Mike

[Big Game Hunter]

Hi Mike

Thank you for your detailed answer. I have attached my network settings and verified my business settings in the previous post to show everyone that the details are 100% right. That's why we are stumped here?

What I did was load a snapshot into a new installation and loaded it onto a new server and that didn't work. This is why I'm getting very frustrated with the actinic support team because they seem to be ignoring where I say that i have proved it's an actinic issue.

What's more interesting is that this problem seems to be spreading. I now have 3 websites within actinic that are now giving the same error. There is a damaged file somewhere that is corrupting these websites. I just can't work out which one it is.

[Mike Hughes]

If we assume that there might be a damaged file somewhere that's causing the problem then I would:

1. Compact and repair the database.
2. Copy over a fresh set of perl scripts. I think they're in the original folder and this should give you the same scripts as the default site you tested with. There should be no problems from this as I believe you don't have any script modifications.
3. Check the email address in Actinic is 'on domain'.

Do a full site refresh.

Mike

PS. have you confimed that the default site does run OK on fasthosts or was that running on another host?

[Big Game Hunter]

Solved

Thank you Mike for your last post. It did help us identify what the problem was in the end.

Just for everybody's reference, it was the Actinic.pm that had got corrupted in the site and original folder. I installed a standalone actinic installation, got that file and replaced the corrupted files. Sorted.

Thank you everybody for all your help. We actually only found that solution by dredging the community and saw a post from Norman that's about 5 years old.

Thank you again and hopefully this post will help someone in the future if they have the same issue.

[Mike Hughes]

It's good to see you've solved this one. It's always looked like an odd problem and the solution explains so much of the strange things that were happening.

Well done.

Mike

[Duncan Rounding]

It's interesting that the file could become corrupt yet still partially work. Was the file truncated or was the code changed?