Free-online migration: mailbox not receiving incoming emails

[#1]

Last Friday* (31Nov) one of my Free-online email domains was migrated to Greenby.  I started testing and was puzzled by odd results - I was able to send emails successfully but some emails sent to my mailbox (username@username.free-online.co.uk) were received but some were not.  I've now tracked the issue down to what appears to be the refusal of the Greenby servers to accept incoming emails from external sources (ie on the internet).

From my tests, I can:

- send emails to my other (yet-to-be migrated) Free-online mailboxes.
- send emails to my other external mailboxes eg Proton mail.
- receive emails from my other (yet-to-be migrated) Free-online mailboxes.
- receive emails from the "new" (migrated) Free-online mailbox ie sending myself a message.
BUT I cannot receive emails from any other mailbox anywhere else.

It seems that whilst emails can be received via internal routing within the Greenby and PlusNet servers, any external incoming messages are being blocked (and with no error messages).

I've tried this morning to raise a ticket with the Greenby help system but it hasn't responded - currently saying "Awaiting Reply 1h 29m".  Of course, it maybe that I've not created the ticket query properly - the Greenby support system is somewhat unhelpful and, shall we say, "idiosyncratic"?

Can anyone offer any guidance or advice?  Right now, it seems I'm cut-off and I face the prospect of rapidly changing my email addresses with all my contacts...


* Needless to say, the migration took place without warning (if you discount the email from PlusNet back in July).  I dread the sudden migration of my partner's email domains with the same loss of connectivity.

[#2]

@eeyore033 Something has gone wrong here - email accounts are transferred in their entirety - not mailbox by mailbox. 

Re-reading this to reply to other points, I  have decided not to do so it looks a tad complicated and beyond my limited understanding.

I shall leave it for others.

[#3]

@eeyore033 just follwing on from what @jab1 posted

Do you have multiple free-online accounts ? i.e different <usernames>.free-online.co.uk ? 

and if so , is it all mailboxes on one of the accounts that aren't receiveing OR are some mailboxes receiving but others on the same account not ?

[#4]

Thanks for the responses.

Background:  My partner and I set-up several accounts with Free-online over twenty-odd years ago.  PlusNet have been operating the Free-online system for how many years now?  There are now four active accounts (plus several that won't be migrated because they are now dormant). 

The account in question, let's call it "eeyore.free-online.co.uk", is the one migrated on Friday. The other accounts, let's call them piglet.free-online.co.uk, tigger.free-online.co.uk and kanga.free-online.co.uk, have not yet been migrated.

The primary "mailbox" is eeyore@eeyore.free-online.co.uk which is the address to which PlusNet sent the email say it had been migrated (they also sent a duplicate email to postmaster@eeyore.free-online.co.uk)  Of course, I use variations, for example plusnet@eeyore.free-online.co.uk for mail with PlusNet or hmrc@eeyore.free-online.co.uk for HMRC. All the emails with the eeyore.free-online.co.uk domain name will automatically arrive in the eeyore.free-online.co.uk mailbox at PlusNet/Greenby.  (I use another piece of software which collects all new emails from all the mailbox accounts using POP3 and to organise the new emails for my off-line email client to read and store.  Complicated?  Well, yes, it is, but it works for me and my partner!  It's what happens when the system has grown bit-by-bit from the earliest use of emails in the 1980s.)  

To answer your questions:

eeyore.free-online.co.uk has been migrated. 

That mailbox account can:

- send emails to all mailboxes that I have tested (eg poohbear@gmail.com or tigger@tigger.free-online.co.uk

- CAN receive emails from other Free-online accounts eg tigger@tigger.free-online.co.uk

- CANNOT receive emails from external mailboxes eg poohbear@gmail.com or roo@proton.me.  

I have tested sending messages to eeyore.free-online.co.uk using different mailbox names such eeyore@eeyore.free-online.co.uk, test@eeyore.free-online.co.uk or fred@eeyore.free-online.co.uk - nothing arrives.

I suspect that there's some setting that blocks or filters incoming messages from the internet connection because messages being passed within the PlusNet/Greenby servers from other PlusNet accounts get though successfully.  

Hope you can help!


PS:  The Ticket #597 is still "Awaiting reply 4h 5m"

[#5]

@eeyore033  I've highlighted this thread to the correct people

[#6]

---

@eeyore033 wrote:

The account in question, let's call it "eeyore.free-online.co.uk", is the one migrated on Friday.

The primary "mailbox" is eeyore@eeyore.free-online.co.uk which is the address to which PlusNet sent the email say it had been migrated (they also sent a duplicate email to postmaster@eeyore.free-online.co.uk)

I use variations, for example plusnet@eeyore.free-online.co.uk for mail with PlusNet or hmrc@eeyore.free-online.co.uk for HMRC. All the emails with the eeyore.free-online.co.uk domain name will automatically arrive in the eeyore.free-online.co.uk mailbox at PlusNet/Greenby.

That mailbox account can:
- send emails to all mailboxes that I have tested (eg poohbear@gmail.com or tigger@tigger.free-online.co.uk
- CAN receive emails from other Free-online accounts eg tigger@tigger.free-online.co.uk
- CANNOT receive emails from external mailboxes eg poohbear@gmail.com or roo@proton.me.  

I have tested sending messages to eeyore.free-online.co.uk using different mailbox names such eeyore@eeyore.free-online.co.uk, test@eeyore.free-online.co.uk or fred@eeyore.free-online.co.uk - nothing arrives.

---

OK a very important question... are the following real email addresses / defined aliases or are they catchall aliases?

• plusnet@
• hmrc@
• test@
• fred@

From some reference testing I have done (albeit to a trouble migration test account) I have seen issues with processing email addresses which are not an actual mailbox or to aliases which are not explicitly defined.

In account settings, do you recall if the default mailbox is postmaster@eeyore.free-online.co.uk or eeyore@eeyore.free-online.co.uk?

Does sending to postmaster@eeyore.free-online.co.uk work?

Can you access the account via the Greenby portal yet?  If yes can you look to see what aliases are defined and if the catchall is switched on.

[#7]

Having looked at the troubled migrated test email account in the Greenby portal, I cannot discern any alias management options.

As above from @MisterW your experience has been escalated and I have added further observations.

[#8]

Thanks for the quick responses.

===============================
OK a very important question... are the following real email addresses / defined aliases or are they catchall aliases?

    plusnet@
    hmrc@
    test@
    fred@
===============================

Sorry, I don't know enough to give the correct answers.  They are "names" which the senders use in the email address to send to me, eg when PlusNet email me using the mailbox address of "plusnet@eeyore.free-online.co.uk".  That's how it worked for me with the PlusNet version of Free-online:  all messages with any name preceding the "@eeyore.free-online.co.uk" will appear in my "eeyore" mailbox. 

Aliases, Catchall Aliases are foreign terms to me - unknown until I opened the settings section of Greenby's system.  In the course of trying to make sense of what was going wrong in the last couple of days, I have looked at the settings for the "eeyore" account.  Yes, I was able to login the the Greenby account immediately (on Friday). The Catchall setting is "ON" (I think it was set to ON already.  I have tried to define aliases, but after I type in any alias address & clicking save, it just disappears - it seems not to want to let me set aliases. [The thought occurs to me just now, that maybe if the Catchall is ON, then that prevents the setting of specific aliases?  Will test that by switching Catchall to OFF]
So the answers are: 
Catchall: ON 
Aliases:  blank

Yes, I had tried (and retried a few minutes ago) to send messages to postmaster@eeyore.free-online.co.uk - nothing appears in the eeyore@eeyore.free-online.co.uk mailbox.  I assume eeyore@eeyore.free-online.co.uk is the default.

And to add to the bad news - my partner has received the dreaded email to "kanga@kanga.free-online.co.uk" (cc'd to postmaster@kanga.free-online.co.uk) to say her account was migrated today!  Obviously, I've immediately tested her migrated account and no external emails are being received (other than the "internal" emails from PlusNet).  (I made no changes to the account or mailbox settings prior or subsequent to the testing.)

Make you for your efforts to sort-out this problem for us - it is much appreciated.

[#9]

That should of course say "Thank you for your efforts to sort-out this problem for us - it is much appreciated."

[#10]

"Having looked at the troubled migrated test email account in the Greenby portal, I cannot discern any alias management options."

Is there anywhere a source that I can consult on the meaning and purpose of the "features" in Greenby's implementation of Roundcube such as aliases? I don't recall any such option in the PlusNet version but is was so simple and it worked!  My only grumble was it was sometimes slow and occasionally flagged SQL error messages to the back-end data-base.

 The help documentation on the Greenby site is either too simplistic or non-existent.  Navigation around their site is cumbersome and non-intuitive,
[Whoops, I hope it wasn't someone here who wrote it!]

[#11]

OK, you send email to an email address; an email address can be …

• a real mailbox 
• a defined alias for a real mailbox
• an undefined name, which if there’s a catchall on the account goes to the default mailbox

So for all those addresses you mentioned, prior to migration were those names defined explicitly or were you relying on the catchall to collect and deliver them to the default mailbox?

I suspect that you’ve been working with using anything.useful@eeyore.free-online.co.uk without anything.useful being configured as an explicit name.

That is all perfectly acceptable.  I suspect that there’s an issue with handling the catchall facility.

[#12]

Looking at their webmail set up is next on my list.  I’m out at the moment.  That said I thought it’s all using the Plusnet webmail service.

That does not have aliases, but it does have identities for sending as from another email address.  I doubt that influences receiving.

[#13]

OK, you send email to an email address; an email address can be …

    a real mailbox 
    a defined alias for a real mailbox
    an undefined name, which if there’s a catchall on the account goes to the default mailbox

So for all those addresses you mentioned, prior to migration were those names defined explicitly or were you relying on the catchall to collect and deliver them to the default mailbox?

I suspect that you’ve been working with using anything.useful@eeyore.free-online.co.uk without anything.useful being configured as an explicit name.

That is all perfectly acceptable.  I suspect that there’s an issue with handling the catchall facility.

The "undefined name" option sounds to me to be the route I've been using (for decades).  I have used names to suit my purpose specific to the outfit to whom I'm giving the email address.  I've never defined to the Free-online system what names I'm using in addresses.  When the email arrives in the (default) mailbox as displayed by the PlusNet Webmail or is downloaded by POP3 to my email client, the message is listed with all the others but I can quickly sort, read, store or discard based on the address.  

I know nothing about "anything.useful@Eeyore.free-online.co.uk" - do I need to? Or is it just that there's a glitch in Catchall which once fixed, I can return to blissful ignorance?  

But the real deal-breaker is:  if emails addressed even to the default mailbox (eeyore@eeyore.free-online.co.uk) can't be received, then the migration is pointless - we'll be moving elsewhere rapidly.

Thanks for your assistance & clarification.

[#14]

Sounds as though you have been using anything.needed@

It is perfectly acceptable with a catchall.  That’s exactly what I do all of the time.

Do not give up hope just yet … note you cannot move eeyore.free-online.co.uk to somewhere else.

The SUs have raised an escalation and I’ll chase it tomorrow.  There’s also something else to be checked.

[#15]

Question: Your "welcome to Greenby" email, was it sent to eeyore@eeyore.free-online.co.uk AND to postmaster@ ?