forum mail error

forum mail error

by Erlyn Baack -
Number of replies: 8

I'm not sure what's happening here.  I'm eight weeks into a course in Moodle 1.3.1 (2004052501), and a few days ago I started getting forum mail errors.  Although this forum was already set to forced subscription, I reset it again to forced subscription and still get the same errors.  When I checked the forum logfiles in Moodle, the following appeared (with html removed here):

Thu 30 September 2004, 06:35 PM 200.76.168.117  Natalia forum mail error  Second Exam
Thu 30 September 2004, 06:35 PM 200.76.168.117  Nestor forum mail error  Second Exam
Thu 30 September 2004, 06:35 PM 200.76.168.117  Rodrigo forum mail error  Second Exam
(It's the same information for about 25 more students all with the same IP information.

I don't understand the IP addresses.  The same address appears before all my students' names (all from Mexico).  A click on this address shows the world map indicating the link is from Australia.  Another IP address before all students' names indicates Milton, New South Wales, Australia, and another IP address, England. 

So while the messages from this forced subscription forum have worked until a few days ago, I am getting these errors and error messages from running the cron.php file as well.

At the same time, my comments on their students' assignments ARE being sent.

Does anyone have any idea what is happening here?  I don't know if this is a website host error or a Moodle error.

Thanks!

Erlyn Baack

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In reply to Erlyn Baack

Re: forum mail error

by Paul Nijbakker -

I wish I had a solution, but I am afraid I have a similar problem instead. I myself and a number of other older (in the sense of created earlier) user IDs in our Moodle, version 1.3.4, receive e-mails and notifications from for example the workshop modules, but newer users, such as my students, do not recieve anything (And the logs fill up with forum mail errors). sad

In my case according to the log pop-up all IP addresses in the log list are located in Amsterdam, which is incorrect. The IP address that appears before all the forum mail error listings is the IP address of our Moodle server here in Kemi.

So we have a situation where the cron job is running (since some users keep receiving e-mail comme il faut), but newer users recieve nothing. There is no firewall issue since most of the e-mail is destined for our internal e-mail program, but it gets forum mail error just the same as with the external e-mail addresses.

This is a puzzling situation that I would like to correct very much, but I am eagerly looking, just like Erlyn, for hints as to the cause and suggestions for a solution.

Thanks beforehand, Paul.

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In reply to Paul Nijbakker

Re: forum mail error

by Eric Hagley -
I'm unsure if this will help but here goes.  I was under the impression that by closing the eyes beside their email addresses in the student's profiles this hid the email addresses from others.  I believe this was the case in 1.2.  In 1.3... by closing the eyes you are turning off the email NOT making it invisible.  All email sent to that email is stopped.  I only found this out by checking who was getting mail and who wasn't and then going through their information with a fine tooth comb.  If you waggle your cursor over the closed or open address it will show "inactive" or "active". I'm sure the change (was it a change or have I been under the wrong impression the whole time?) had some documentation with it, but I didn't see it.  I would suggest you look to see if your students' have their email addresses activated or not.  Perhaps this will fix your problem - I got my students to activate their addresses and the problems I had with news forums not going out disappeared! (obviously!)
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In reply to Eric Hagley

Re: forum mail error

by Erlyn Baack -

Thanks to Paul and Eric I now know I'm not the only one with this problem. smile  The mystery for me is that I don't recall doing anything out of the ordinary that could have caused the problem.

My situation is neither like Paul's nor Eric's exactly.  I enrolled all my participants, about 30 of them, in about an hour or two, so there are really no "older" or "newer" users, at least outside the range of that hour or two.  Also, earlier today I checked every student's email address, and all were active. 

Since there's only one forum in which I use forced subscription for 30 students, for now I just decided to use my email program to send the messages which is no problem.  When the course is over, I'll just start new with the latest Moodle.

Thanks again!

Erlyn Baack
ITESM, Campus Querétaro, Mexico 

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In reply to Erlyn Baack

Re: forum mail error

by Paul Nijbakker -

Hi Erlyn,

I am afraid I was mistaken about the older/newer difference, there was none. The difference is in fact between users of our school e-mail client and other clients. So only the users of the school e-mail (our own teachers) receive e-mail copies, but not the students or any other users even if they use the school student mail account.

So the situation is that Moodle only succeeds in sending mail to one e-mail program and generates errors for any other mail whether it is inside or outside our LAN.

This should be a problem in the settings either of Moodle or of the server (I guess, but we have to look into that). I will post a solution if we find one, but I remain open to sugestions smile

Rgrds, Paul.

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In reply to Paul Nijbakker

Re: forum mail error

by Martin Dougiamas -
Picture of Core developers Picture of Documentation writers Picture of Moodle HQ Picture of Particularly helpful Moodlers Picture of Plugin developers Picture of Testers
This is almost definitely the mail system that you have specified (either the sendmail/qmail/exim/etc on the same server, or the SMTP server you set up in the settings).  The mail server logs should have more details.
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In reply to Martin Dougiamas

Re: forum mail error

by Erlyn Baack -

Hi Paul and Martin,

Thanks for your comments.  I just checked the SMTP host, user, and pass in the configuration variables, and they're all blank as they've always been.  I'll check the server logs and if I find out anything, like successes or failures, I'll report right back.  Thanks again!

Erlyn

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In reply to Martin Dougiamas

Re: forum mail error

by Paul Nijbakker -

Hi Martin,

You are absolutely right; once we knew that it was not the ID, but the e-mail system, our IT person found the permission he had to give to Moodle and now it seems to work just fine smile

This pilot year is going excellent so far (since this is the most serious problem we have encountered). I am under the impression that my students work better in Moodle than they did in WebCT, but I need more data to reinforce that impression.

I hope Erlyn's problem will be solved too cool

Rgrds, Paul.

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In reply to Paul Nijbakker

Re: forum mail error

by Erlyn Baack -

Hi Martin and Paul,

After seven email exchanges over a period of ten days with my website host, I received this:

We apologize for previous response.  Currrntly we are facing lot of problems with our clients sending spam mails from the mail script. Due to of which limits to send emails is set to Maximum 5 mails at a point of time.  Therefore you cannot send emails to your 30 students at one time. You have to limit your script to send maximum 5 mails at time then send next mails after at least 15 second interval.  We appreciate your understanding in this regard.  Please check the limits for your mailing - vdeck - 100/hour.  One can only send 5 emails every 10 seconds.

I'll just say all emails were sent perfectly until a couple of weeks ago.  So when my website host reset their email limit to five emails every ten seconds and I wrote them about the problem, it shouldn't really have taken this long to find out the cause.

So as it is, you guys have contributed a LOT (thank you wink ), for I can now focus my attention on my website host problem!   evil

Thanks again!

Erlyn

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