Inconsistent Email Notifications

[colby2152]

Over the past several months, my users have reported that they only receive a partial amount of notification emails for new posts (ones they subscribe to).  Which areas should I investigate in SMF settings or my server to see how this problem can be appropriately addressed?

[Kindred]

who is your host?

[colby2152]

who is your host?

WJunk

[margarett]

Did you enable mail queue in SMF?

[colby2152]

Did you enable mail queue in SMF?

It is enabled.

[margarett]

And what are the configurations? Are you sure it's not exceeding your host limits?

[colby2152]

And what are the configurations? Are you sure it's not exceeding your host limits?

Limits are set to 0/0 (unlimited).  I rent out my own server, so there shouldn't be an issue with hosting limits although that may be the next place to check.

[Arantor]

Bit pointless using the mail queue if you're not actually using it. I'd suggest actually putting in numbers, though exactly what numbers would be down to your hosting limits.

[colby2152]

Here are some mail server settings on my server....



Maximum Number of Mail Processes = 512
Maximum Size of a Mail Process (MB) = 256
Maximum IMAP Connections Per IP = 20
Interval between IMAP IDLE "OK Still here" messages = 24
Maximum POP3 Connections per IP = 3
Number of Spare Authentication Processes = 2
Maximum Number of Authentication Processes = 50
Maximum Size of a Authentication Process (MB) = 64
Size of Authentication Cache (KB) = 1024
Time to Cache Successful Logins = 3600
Time to Cache Failed Logins = 3600
Idle Check Interval = 30
Trash Expire Time = 30

[Arantor]

All of those appear to be inbound, not outbound, settings...

[colby2152]

All of those appear to be inbound, not outbound, settings...

How would I found outbound in cPanel?

[Arantor]

I have no idea, I haven't used cPanel on any real basis in years.

[margarett]

Maybe it's easier to ask your host about that

[colby2152]

Maybe it's easier to ask your host about that

I did just that and it was some overprotective settings reducing emails to 100 per hour.  I jacked that up to 25,000.  Thanks for walking me through the troubleshooting.

[Arantor]

Because 25000 per hour won't see you get flagged by other hosts as an email relay or anything >_<

[colby2152]

Because 25000 per hour won't see you get flagged by other hosts as an email relay or anything >_<

By other hosts?  I rent out my own server.

25,000 per hour is less than 1,000 per minute.  With a community of a couple thousand members, the combination of newsletters, topic notifications, and PM emails could actually surpass that amount.

[Arantor]

Email isn't some magic end to end thing, you send them out fine but they have to pass through various relays to get to their destination. 25k per hour see you flagged as a spammer by the relays and endpoints.

A community of a couple thousand members shouldn't be generating 1000 emails per minute, because that would imply that 1 out of every 2 members is making a new post every minute, where everyone is set to receive notifications.

Heck, we don't even reach 1k emails per minute here except when we do the newsletter updates to people, and we certainly don't do 1k emails per minute for that.

[colby2152]

Email isn't some magic end to end thing, you send them out fine but they have to pass through various relays to get to their destination. 25k per hour see you flagged as a spammer by the relays and endpoints.

A community of a couple thousand members shouldn't be generating 1000 emails per minute, because that would imply that 1 out of every 2 members is making a new post every minute, where everyone is set to receive notifications.

Heck, we don't even reach 1k emails per minute here except when we do the newsletter updates to people, and we certainly don't do 1k emails per minute for that.

To your second point, it would mean 60 posts per hour which is hardly that much.

[Arantor]

Where did I say 1 per minute exactly? Nowhere have I said 1 per minute.