Forum email notifications stopped working

Forum email notifications stopped working

by pepe lans -
Number of replies: 3

Hi there.

We have a problem regarding forum notifications.

It turns out that, suddenly, participants inside forums stopped receiving notifications about the messages and discussions posted. This has been working always with no issues. The last change made to our server was 3 months ago. So no modifications were made when the notifications stopped working.

Every forum is configured with "forzed subscription" option.

All other transaction emails such as password-recover or sign up on courses still working fine. The only thing we have noticed that is not working as expected are forum notifications.

We have already tried to restart postfix and also executing mysite.com/admin/cron.php but no luck.

Has anyone experienced this behavior or know what could be happening here?

Any help would be appreciated.

Thank you in advance!


Moodle version: 3.2.2

Control Panel: Plesk Onyx



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In reply to pepe lans

Re: Forum email notifications stopped working

by Ken Task -
Picture of Particularly helpful Moodlers

First ... moodle version is very old.   So is your Control Panel.
https://docs.plesk.com/en-US/onyx/advanced-administration-guide-linux/services-management/mail-service.68762/
shows at the very top:
This is documentation for Plesk Onyx. Go to documentation for the latest version, Plesk Obsidian.

In your moodle, forced subscribed forums could result in a lot of messages and responses
and as a result your server has reached max's for such email. (individual messages
for things like password resets and sign ups still function).

If you can, try to locate PostFix server logs. See what they might say ... looking for
messages coming from forums.

Got a terminal icon in panel?   If so, could you run:
mailq [enter]
or
showq [enter]

to see if there is mail stuck in postfix outgoing ques?

https://docs.plesk.com/en-US/onyx/advanced-administration-guide-linux/troubleshooting.68745/
Postfix Consumes Too Many Resources in a Container

If you operate in Virtuozzo containers, the Postfix mail service may consume too many resources and, hence, work in an unstable manner. This is particularly likely to happen if there is a lot of outgoing mail that cannot be delivered. By default, Postfix can create up to 100 mail sending processes that will not stop until they send the specified mail.

To reduce resources consumption by Postfix:

    Reduce the maximum number of Postfix processes, for example, to 20:

    # postconf -e 'default_process_limit=20'

If you have old messages from your forums in your inbox, look at the full header of the message and read upwards from the Subject line.   Every line that shows 'Received from' was a mail server/system that message ran through to get to your inbox.

Doing above will show what was working when it worked.

Also, your server could have gotten blackholed by one of your participants mail systems reporting suspicious email - subject lines, content in messages, the number of messages at one time, etc. could cause such things.

Might check if your server is in one of those:

https://mxtoolbox.com/blacklists.aspx

'SoS', Ken

Average of ratings: Useful (1)
In reply to Ken Task

Re: Forum email notifications stopped working

by pepe lans -
Hi Ken. Thank you so much for your quick reply.

I followed up your suggestions and after some research, we've found out that for some reason our SMTP server is marking as spam almost all forum messages. So emails are never sent to recipients.
I contacted my server email provider and he asked me for an email header, so they can mark it as a legit email. That didn't work. And I guess that is because every response is different each one with a different header and they might be stuck on the spam filter again.

Is there any way to avoid all forum messages to not stuck on the email's server spam filter?

Thank you so much again in advance!
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In reply to pepe lans

Re: Forum email notifications stopped working

by Ken Task -
Picture of Particularly helpful Moodlers

There is no way I can offer a fix without having more information of a sensitive nature.

"because every response is different each one with a different header"

The only things different in headers are From, To, Subject.   The path mail takes is or should be the same.  All those 'Received from' lines one sees in a header should be the same.

So first, things to check and try:

In setup of SMTP in Moodle,
https://yourserver/admin/settings.php?section=outgoingmailconfig

Site administration
Server
Email
Outgoing mail configuration

there is a setting for
No-reply and domain ... no-reply address should probably be left for default
which is noreply@yourmoodleserverfqdn

There is a test outgoing mail configuration link.
Send to an email address.  Click Send a test message.
What happens?
If successful check the headers of that message.

I'll send to you via PM here an address of mine you can use for a test.

Also ... your site is using an old version of Plesk ... am almost certain that Plesk settings for email would be involved here ... from what you have described.  Hint or clue might be 'bulk' ... how many messages can be sent at one time.   For that sort of thing, you must contact hosting provider.

'SoS', Ken

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