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[Resolved] POP account checking not working


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I use SpamCop's POP account checking to download mail from my mail.endoframe.com account. It seems to have stopped working sometime last night. SpamCop's Web mail configuration interface shows "Cannot contact server" in the error column; yet I'm able to ping mail.endoframe.com.

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I use SpamCop's POP account checking to download mail from my mail.endoframe.com account. It seems to have stopped working sometime last night. SpamCop's Web mail configuration interface shows "Cannot contact server" in the error column; yet I'm able to ping mail.endoframe.com.

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Pinging a server is not the same as actually trying to handle some data transfer. If you allege (which you don't even mention testing) that your own e-mail app can contact and collect/send e-mail through this server, then have you asked them if they chose to do some blocking actions that are causing the "cannot connect" error message to appear?

Based on previous Topics/Discussion on "quit working" sceanrios, have you attempted any of those suggested fixes/troubleshooting steps?

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I didn't try downloading the mail to a mail client; but I had a similar problem about a month ago, and then downloading the mail to a mail client seemed to "fix" the problem. And this time it looks like getting rid of some spam in the account "fixed" it. The common element: clearing out some of the existing e-mail makes SpamCop's POP mail downloading work again.

I found some old postings suggesting that SpamCop wouldn't download "blank" e-mail; but in this case it seems like some problematic e-mail kept SpamCop from downloading any of the messages that were present. Why would this be so?

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I found some old postings suggesting that SpamCop wouldn't download "blank" e-mail; but in this case it seems like some problematic e-mail kept SpamCop from downloading any of the messages that were present. Why would this be so?

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Glitches can occur anywhere. A more 'normal' situation is someone receiving one of those 10-15Meg e-mails, user dials up his/her ISP, fires up e-mail, and after sitting there for 10 minutes seeing that "receiving e-mail" thing twirl round and round .. decides to hang up and try again. Try after try and is eventually convinced that it's broken, calls the ISP, who (to solve the problem) deletes that 10-15Meg e-mail .... user is happy that things work again. Basically, when your app connects, there's a "list" of things offered to collect, so your systems asks for item #1, when it's handled, we move to item #2 ... until the list is completed. If e-mail #3 is hosed, you'll see the symptom of e-mails #1 & 2 downloaded every time a connection is made .... items 3-15 are never accomplished ... in your suggested situation, e-mail #3 was the "problem" and you manually deleted it from the list of things "not retrieved" .... either actually killing off the bad e-mail or magically fixing "the list" ....

There are many other configurations and settings of the various applications, so there are many ways for the ISP's side of things and the user's side of things getting out of sync ... one side saying something is "there" .. the other side choking on that "wrong" data .... For example, Outlook Express uses a file called Pop3uidl.dbx to keep track of things seen, retrieved, deleted, etc. This file gets corrupted and all kinds of strange things happen ... each e-mail shows up seven times, e-mail is retreived but none gets sent, on and on .. and of course, the many phone calls to that user's ISP can lead to some nasty exchanges unless one of them knows about the impact of this file gone bad. How that file goes bad I just answered in a query about "deleting e-mails" that I moved into the Software issues Forum just this morning.

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Thanks for the explanation. I do not ordinarily download mail from the mail.endoframe.com server; I let SpamCop retrieve it and then I retrieve it from SpamCop.

So the only "app" connecting would be SpamCop's downloader; and thus from your description it sounds as though some bug in that app prevented it from properly handling a (probably malformed) e-mail.

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So the only "app" connecting would be SpamCop's downloader; and thus from your description it sounds as though some bug in that app prevented it from properly handling a (probably malformed) e-mail.

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I'm not going to agree with the word "big" in this case. More of a case of "stuff happens"

Your reference to "blank e-mails" causing an issue, for instance. SMTP / POP has a standard format of data and data handling. These "blank e-mails" in question are generally seen as an e-mail transaction that was either cut-off in midstream or the spammer's application was totally hosed. The catch is that this e-mail "package" was accepted at the user's ISP. When the user's e-mail client asks for the e-mail from that Inbox, data starts flowing. Picking on one item as a for instance, the e-mail body is supposed to end with a carriage return/linefeed followed by a period ... as that "blank e-mail" was screwed in somewhere, there is no final linefeed followed by a period, the next line of data in the Inbox is the beginning of the next message, which then causes someone/something to start choking. This is not a "bug" .. this is something that's happening "out of the ordinary in a non-standard way" .... in this event, you're left to the whims of the programmers involved and what types of error checking they did, compounded by what kinds of error messages they then point to. In reality, someone gets stuck looking at the log files and working out the problems for themselves <g>

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It's a failure to deal with bad input, resulting in deviant behavior by the program. Where I come from, that's a bug; but whatever.

When this happened previously I was able to download the messages directly to my mail client (Evolution); that strongly suggests that this is fixable. Would you (or SpamCop personnel, if not you personally) be able to fix it if a problem e-mail message could be isolated? If so, I can try to do that the next time this happens.

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It's a failure to deal with bad input, resulting in deviant behavior by the program. Where I come from, that's a bug; but whatever.

When this happened previously I was able to download the messages directly to my mail client (Evolution); that strongly suggests that this is fixable. Would you (or SpamCop personnel, if not you personally) be able to fix it if a problem e-mail message could be isolated? If so, I can try to do that the next time this happens.

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As a user simply volunteering time here, I doubt that JT would allow me access to his core systems (though still not sure of the decision process that led to allowing me access priveliges 'here' actually) <g> ... but we may not be together yet. While supporting a dozen or so ISPs in my area, other ISPs while living elsewhere, I'm trying to state that this is a universal thing. Dating back to when 56K was just coming out, I can recall writing a routine for one local ISP such that handling this specific issue could even be done by the receptionist while she was talking to the customer.

Now if it was every e-mail coming from a certain ISP, that might be resolvable. But the one every now and then, especially if it's based on spam crap, it goes back to the "stuff happens" scenario.

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