Has anyone else experienced problems with loss of outgoing mail from Webmail today? About half the mail I've sent appears not to have been delivered. Mail sent from other sources has arrived fine. The mail hasn't bounced - it appears to have simply vanished. I am certain that it's not being "eaten" by spam filters, etc.

I was wondering if one of Spamcop's outgoing mail queues might have got stuck, as has occurred occasionally in the past.

Thanks,

Chris

I can only report that the very few Emails I send from within the webmail interface have all been successfully delivered. But the numbers I send may not be statistically significant compared to someone that uses the webmail for all their Email activity.

Andrew

I just sent a few test messages from webmail to several non-Spamcop addresses and they all arrived quickly.

DT

Oh well - could be a problem with my ISP. I'll keep an eye on things and see what happens. Just wanted to check if anyone else had seen any issues. If not, I guess it's at my ISP's end!

Thanks,

Chris

I've just got home and discovered what the problem is: the test messages I sent had been delivered to my ISP (and picked up by Spamcop), but were NOT being displayed in my Webmail inbox. When I downloaded my mail by POP3 they all appeared.

I guess this is a bug in Webmail - who should I report it to?

Thanks,

Chris

Chris, the 'usual/recommended' procedure is to use the contact form: http://mail.spamcop.net/contact.php

Make sure I have this correct:

You sent a test message to your ISP, the message was forwarded or POPed to your Spamcop account, but you couldn't see it in the Spamcop Webmail?

If that's correct, I'm working on the problem right now. We seem to have buggy IMAP servers on the Webmail machines. We ought to have shiny new IMAP software (with a whole set of shiny new obscure quirks) by the end of the day if all goes well.

-Trevor

That's absolutely correct, Trevor. The e-mail had been picked up by Spamcop, but Webmail wasn't showing it. When I downloaded my mail by POP3, it all magically appeared.

Thanks for confirming that this is a known issue - I look forward to the solution because I use Webmail while I'm at work.

Thanks!

Chris

Not sure about your "known issue" .... the other current conversations about message-numbers, message-IDs, VER, etc. don't really complain about 'missing' e-mail. In your query and response, you never state that you are using an IMAP connection.

So .. are you reporting something 'new' .... or is there yet another spin that you can offer to those existing IMAP / VER Topics/Discussions ..????

Hi Wazoo,

I an not directly using IMAP. I'm reading my e-mail via Webmail, and messages are missing from my inbox on Webmail. When I download my mail from Spamcop via POP3, those missing message are downloaded, despite not being shown on Webmail. I guess that what Trevor means is that Webmail retrieves mail via IMAP, and it's that process which is faulty.

Hope that clarifies it!

Regards,

Chris

As just stated in another Topic .. I possibly shouldn't be posting right now .. but ...

IMAP is a connection between the user's machine and the hosting ISP ... this would not be SpamCop's servers talking to other servers.

This far, Trevor's descriptions have been about IMAP software on various SpamCop servers. On the other hand, this IMAP software would be dealing with the same data/databases .. and based on the description of some login issues sometime earlier today that apprently impacted 'everything' ....????

To me, your issue is something 'new' because you are "not using an IMAP interface/connection" .. but again, the e-mail servers are not mine to play with.

Wazoo, If I were to hazard a guess, I would say that SpamCop is using POP3 to pull messages from various ISP as well as receiving some messages as being directly forwarded from ISP or sent directly to the SpamCop account.
There would appear to be a series of servers involved that may be processing the mail using IMAP to move it from one server to the next.
Mail comes in and has to process through an initial set of filters which then sends some mail to the held mail folder and other mail to the inbox and maybe some mail elsewhere???.
The VER interface accesses the held mail folder and assigns it own set of record numbers to that mail
The WebMail interface accesses all the mail in multiple folders and assigns mail in each folder with its own record number that changes as mail is added and or removed from each folder.
The WebMail interface also has its own set of filters that sorts and handles the mail.

The VER interface moves mail from the heldmail database to one or two separate directions.
1) It can simply send the mail to the trash folder (database)
2) It can send the mail to the quick reporting database and delete it from the user's mail box
3) It can send the mail to be queued for full reporting and delete it from the user's mail box
4) It can send the mail to be queued for full reporting but leave a flagged copy in the held mail database
5) It can move the mail from held mail to the inbox or forward it somewhere else dependant upon the user's preferences.
6) It can move the mail from held mail to the inbox or forward it somewhere else dependant upon the user's preferences and also white list the mail making yet another entry is some database

The WebMail interface provides for some of the same; moving messages from place to place and doing some form of Quick Reporting that also deletes the message. Full reporting is not a feature of WebMail, but it can be used to forward mail to a reporting account just as you would from any non SpamCop mail client.

The point is that there is a lot of precessing going on in the background connecting servers on opposite ends of the country each doing their own thing with the mail and apparently some of that is being done using some type of IMAP interface or code or protocol.

Now keep in mind that there are multiple servers (blades) doing load balancing that are not all configured the same (as seen with the various versions of SpamAssassin being used) and the recently added grey listing function added to the multiple sets of filters than can be used, there are countless possibilities for odd behaviour.

No how's that for sticking my foot in my mouth?

Here are two quirks I am seeing:
1) I beileve I am seeing the same thing as the OP.
A) I might have n messages in my inbox on webmail
When I pop the messages, I sometimes get message that were not in my Inbox,
C) The change of Webmail software was NOT a definate 'trigger' on the problem. It was happening before, but not a frequently.

2) There is another quirk in HELD MAIL.
A) Let's say I am looking at N messages.
I do quick reporting... there are X more messages
C) Sometimes this may happen over and over again. It does not appear that the messages are just then coming in.
D) This is a quirk, at least for me, since WEBMAIL went from BETA to PRODUCTION-LIVE.

Does this happen when there are only a few messages in the held mail file or only when there are lots of messages? Just wondering if you might be experiencing the max number of messages that can be displayed, which is a long standing issue with the VER interface.
Question, are you talking about the VER interface or the WebMail Interface when speaking about HELD MAIL, as both access the same file but function differently?
How many messages are being displayed before and after using quick reporting?

1) I am talking about the WebMail interface.
2) Here is the usual scenario
A) I go to the HELD MAIL folder.
I am usually looking at 1-99 messages there.
C) I may delete / whitelist a few, sometimes
D) I then SELECT ALL.
E) Then REPORT ALL
F) Click the confirmation
G) Then I am presented with a screen of usually 1-5 message
H) Go back to STEP D, looping until all message are gone.

You may what to check your Mailbox and Folder Display Options >>> Messages per page in the mailbox view. I would guess that you have it currently set at 100. I have recently adjusted mine to 400

Actually, although I don't know Horde, I do know that a number of webmail systems (SquirrelMail for example) piggy back on IMAP to function with all the folder creation etc. So the fact that trevorb is working on the IMAP may resolve the problem for the OP if Horde uses the IMAP structures/folders etc.

Andrew

xzr1tv:

The problem you are seeing is the same as the OP, and we know about it. The symptoms are:
* Mailbox reports N messages in mailbox, but only N-X are visible (i.e. "Viewing messages 1-20 of 20" but you only see 15).
* Certain actions make the missing mails appear again (i.e. you delete one message, now it says "Viewing messages 1-19 of 19" and you actually see 19 messages)
* Reporting all messages in Held Mail results in a few new messages appearing in Held Mail

This all comes down to an IMAP bug that fails to display the remaining messages when it reaches a message it doesn't like. It is unclear still what causes it to fail, but certain messages break it. Because of that, not all users will see this behavior, and if you delete the message that is causing it the behavior will go away.

Wazoo (and all):

IMAP servers simply provide a common way for e-mail clients to grab messages from a mailbox. You have a bunch of messages sitting on our server, and we have an IMAP server that knows where they are. When you want your messages, you contact the IMAP server and ask it for message 1, and it goes to your directory, grabs message 1, and sends it to you. The Webmail system is an e-mail client that happens to run on our servers instead of on your PC, but they still communicate through an IMAP server. They run *different* IMAP servers than you connect to when you access mail.spamcop.net, and *only* the Webmail servers have this bug.

The initial conversion over to new IMAP servers yesterday failed due to a bug in the new version that breaks message filtering. Apparently, even after years of development all these widely-used IMAP servers still have a bunch of strange quirks. We found a fix, and will be attempting the upgrade again soon.

-Trevor

Webmail IMAP servers have been upgraded again:

See this post!