mail to some email forwards doesn't work

[aragorn231]

I've been setting up my shop and while testing emails (from the OSC Admin -> Tools -> Send Email screen) I noticed some weird behaviour:


mails to normal addresses work fine
mails to email forwards on my domain hosted at powweb work fine
mails to email forwards on another domain (not hosted at powweb) don't work at all


Does anyone have any idea why this is happening and how it can be solved?
Thanks in advance!

[snowmaker]

I don't use OSC so I don't know if this it's normal or not for OSC to not send email to a non-powweb domain, but do this as a temp. or perm. fix, it may or may not work.. Login to OPS|SMTP and create an email address, with the recipient as one of these email addresses that OSC will not send to, then set OSC to use the address you just created.

[stevel]

Make sure that the sender address you are using is listed in the SMTP tab in OPS as being "Owned" by one of your POP accounts.

[aragorn231]

Make sure that the sender address you are using is listed in the SMTP tab in OPS as being "Owned" by one of your POP accounts.
I'm not sure if I know what you mean. I have a catch-all address (I think it was created by default) and a couple of email forwards which I've created myself. In the details of the catch-all address it says "Owner: Y".

I've been playing around a bit now with these email forwards and noticed when I click the Add button without providing an email address, that an extra line appears in the details of that forward. In this line it says "Owner: Y". Is this what you mean?

I also noticed that when I click "Take" that this text changes into "Owner: N". And "Take" changes into "Give". However, I have no idea what this means.
Could you explain this a bit? I checked the FAQ in OPS but didn't find details about this.

Sorry for all these questions, as you notice I'm quite new to this stuff. :)

[stevel]

The catchall doesn't help. Lets say that you have osC set up so that the store owner e-mail is sales@example.com (where example.com is your domain). You must add a username of "sales" to the SMTP tab in OPS and set it so that it is "Owned" by one of your POP accounts. If you don't do this, then PowWeb won't let you send mail from "sales". Set a forward for this if you want it directed elsewhere, but you have to have it defined.

"Give" means to give ownership for that username, "Take" means take it away. Clumsy terminology, I agree,

[aragorn231]

Thanks Steve, I got it working now :)

Yeah, the "Give" and "Take" terms are very confusing, especially if you have no clue what the purpose of those functions is. One would even start to doubt ones knowledge of the English language, which is not my mother tongue. But I got it sorted now, cheers.

[redrum]

Are you sure this solved your problems? Do try several email addresses to be sure.

There is a thread about this on the OSC forum
http://forums.oscommerce.com/index.php?showtopic=76879

//Fredrik

[kamy99]

Hi"

I am encoutering the same problem now ! I read the thread on OSC but it seems nobody has a definite answer!

Have you guys solved it here?

I also read stevel's replies above , but I have to admit I am totally confused with POWWEB's emali settings!

My domain is superstars123.com, and when I want to create an email account like help@superstars123.com it asks me to create a user!!
I find that quite confusing, on all my other domains (NOT on POWWEB), you just click to create the email account, no need for any users........

Thanx for your help.

[stevel]

PowWeb has the requirement that any e-mail address has to be associated with a POP user, even if you don't get mail delivered there. You should have at least one already defined as that is the default when a package is created. Just associate the help e-mail with your POP account and "give" it ownership if it doesn't already have it.

I will be the first to admit that this requirement of PowWeb's is confusing, but that's the way it is.

[kamy99]

Problem is, how and where exactly do you do this "give" and "take"?

I'm in the OPS and can't see these options....

[snowmaker]

Problem is, how and where exactly do you do this "give" and "take"?

I'm in the OPS and can't see these options....
OPS|Packages|Email|SMTP

[kamy99]

:confused2

Here's a screen shot of my OPS, am I doing anything wrong?
http://www.superstars123.com/screen.htm

Thanx

Kamy

[stevel]

That all looks ok. What exactly goes wrong when you have osC send mail? And what do you have set for the store owner e-mail address?

[kamy99]

1) What goes wrong:

When a new order is placed some users receive an invoice in their email box, some don't! I tried with my Yahoo account, it works, with Hotmail and AOL doesn't, with my other email account kamy@moein.ca it works, etc......
When I try the Send Mail tool from within the Admin panel --> Tools -->Send Mail, same thing happens, some customers receive the email, some don't


2) Store owner email:
E-Mail Address help@superstars123.com
E-Mail From help@superstars123.com<help@superstars123.com>


I read through the OSC thread, http://forums.oscommerce.com/index.php?showtopic=76879
, it seems many others are experiencing this . but no solution has been foind!:eek: :eek: :eek:

ANY IDEAS?

Thanx again.:cool:

[stevel]

I know what is happening. AOL and some other ISPs (Comcast, for one) is blocking mail sent from PowWeb's web servers due to spamming. The default configuration for PowWeb is that you will not see the bounce. To fix this, create/edit your php.ini and add this line (or replace one that may be there and commented out):

sendmail_path = "/usr/sbin/sendmail -t -i -fhelp@superstars123.com"

I am working on making osC use phpmailer and SMTP for sending mail. This will send mail through PowWeb's SMTP servers which are not usually blocked.

[kamy99]

Well at least that solved some issues!

sendmail_path = "/usr/sbin/sendmail -t -i -fhelp@superstars123.com"

Now we are able toreceive orders in Hotmail, however NOT on AOL! :eek: :(

The other problem still exists:
After the above change, I tried to send an email to a customer through Admin-->Tools--> Send Email
However it never arrived. As a matter of fact I sent the email to my own address, and it didn't come to my box, even though in the Admin it says email sent!:eek: :eek: :confused: :confused:

FYI: In my configuration , Email options I have this settings:

E-Mail Transport Method smtp
E-Mail Linefeeds LF
Use MIME HTML When Sending Emails true
Verify E-Mail Addresses Through DNS false
Send E-Mails true


PLEASE HELP! :confused:

Thanx in advance
Kamy

[stevel]

AOL bounces the mail from PW web servers. You should receive the bounce notice. Nothing you can do about this. Setting the e-mail transport method to smtp in osC does not help since PHP is not set up to use SMTP.

[kamy99]

first of all, I should thank stevel for all his help , not only on this thread but for all other threads too.

I still have another problem:
I try to send an email to a customer through Admin-->Tools--> Send Email
However it never arrives.
As a matter of fact I sent the email to my own address, and it didn't come to my box, even though in the Admin it says email sent!

Any ideas?

thanx
Kamy

[stevel]

It's very difficult to diagnose this kind of problem, as there's usually no feedback. All you know is that sendmail accepted the message, not what it did with it. There's no log (at least accessible to you.)

You may be able to enlist the help of a sympathetic support staffer who can have your site send a test mail and then check the server logs to see what happened.

osC mail works for me, with the caveat of the spam blocks, and I get failure messages.

[stevel]

Oh, make sure you reset the mail sending configuration to sendmail in admin.