Emails sent by phpBB forums on ccgi not being delivered

[#1]

Some time around mid day today emails sent by my phpBB forums stopped being delivered. It's been working for years and no recent changes have been made.
I'm suspecting something is going wrong somewhere between the ccgi servers and the mail servers.
Anyone else seeing problems?

[#2]

I've just realised what has probably gone wrong:

Quote

Planned Email Server DNS Maintenance - Wednesday 5th May 1.30pm-5.00pm Email Posted on: Wednesday 5 May 2010, 13:28 When's this work happening? This afternoon, 5th May. What does it affect? The IP addressing of some of our mail hosts. How long will it take? A couple of hours. What does the work involve? We will be changing the IP addresses of the following mail hosts: mx.ironport.plus.net. relay.ironport.plus.net. quarantine.plus.net. Am I likely to notice the work? No. Is there anything else I need to know? No. Kind Regards, Bob Pullen Customer Support

[#3]

I rang in to report the problem I'm seeing and explained that my forums until today had been sending emails successfully, that it stopped working some time today and that nothing had been changed on the phpBB scripts. I queried whether it was because of the DNS work.
This is the response recorded on the ticket:
[quote=Ticket 33228194]Customer having issues with PHP, advised after planned maintenace we have upgraded to PHP 5 so advised customer to check scripts
I was told that the upgrade to PHP5 occurred between 1:30 and 5pm today - which begs the question as to why there was no Service Status posting to that effect. The agent gave this response after he had apparently consulted with someone from development.
Can someone remind me why I'm still using PN to host my forums please.

[#4]

I've just found that emails sent by a perl script that sends emails are also not working.
Edit: I can't persuade CSC to raise a fault or contact networks.

[#5]

Hi jelv,
That ticket response isn't acceptable
I've just replied to your post over on TBB. I'll get a problem raised and get one of our Network folk on the case...
Edit: FWIW, I've just uploaded a simple script to my webspace that calls on the PHP mail() function and executed it a few times. So far none of the emails have been received.

[#6]

I did the same last night after the first call. It was when that also failed I checked the perl script (a tightly locked down version of formmail).

[#7]

Are you going to post a service status?

[#8]

Yes.
The problem reference is 61780 BTW.
Edit: Service Status now posted:
[quote author="Service Status"]Problems sending email from the CGI web servers (61780) - NEW
We have recently been made aware of a problem preventing emails sent from the CGI platform from arriving at their destination.
We suspect this may have occurred following a period of planned maintenance yesterday afternoon -
http://usertools.plus.net/status/archive/1273062526.htm
Our network engineers are investigating and further details will be provided as they become available.
Apologies for the inconvenience.
Kind Regards,
Bob Pullen
Customer Support

[#9]

Still working on it but some of my emails from this morning are now starting to filter through. I think the iptables are being fixed on each host in turn.

[#10]

Yep
I've started to see emails delivered.

[#11]

Have just cleared the Service Status thread.

[#12]

It's 21:00 and I have just received 3 emails that were delayed - one from late last night.
Your service message of mid afternoon said:

Quote

Our engineers have identified and resolved the cause of the problem and the backlog of emails should now have been delivered.

It seems to be still going on as two of the emails were from 5pm today...
Tony
PS these all use the PHP mail() function.

[#13]

2 more have arrived.
One delayed by half an hour and another by over 6 hours - sent 17:35 on May 6th, and arrived 23:57
So delays are still there with fresh email.
Tony

[#14]

Hi Tony,
The problem with the iptables on the CGI platform has definitely been resolved however it looks like were suffering a different problem now with the mail platform. Headers from a mailing list message I sent myself yesterday suggest that the queues are backing up on the outbound IronPort platform.

Received: from mx.ironport.plus.net (HELO relay.ptn-ipout02.plus.net)
 ([84.92.2.97])  by mx.ptn-ipin01.plus.net with ESMTP; 07 May 2010 03:54:54
 +0100
Received: from relay07.plus.net ([84.93.230.234])  by
 relay.ptn-ipout02.plus.net with ESMTP; 06 May 2010 13:31:25 +0100

Another Service Status on its way...
Edit: now posted:
[quote author="Service Status"]Email Delays (61783) - NEW
We have recently been made aware of a problem affecting the delivery of email.
The delays seem to be affecting email that is both sent and received using our email servers.
If you are expecting an email that is yet to arrive then the delay is likely to be caused by this issue.
Apologies for the inconvenience, we'll provide another update as soon as we have more information.
Kind Regards,
Bob Pullen
Customer Support

[#15]

Should now be sorted now guys.
I'm about to close the Service Status thread if my GPRS connection will allow it, I've no DSL at the moment due to the Openreach engineer at the top of my telegraph pole trying to fix my broadband