E-mail should be working again

mpkossen

Just a short notice to let you all know that we've started using Mandrill to send automated system e-mails to LowEndTalk.com users. Anybody who has been experiencing issues with receiving e-mail should now start to receive e-mail again.

0xdragon

-Insert ColoCrossing joke here-

MannDude

mpkossen

@MannDude said:

I'm not sure what you're trying to say here...? Gmail has weird SPAM filters sometimes, it tosses good e-mail in the SPAM folder for reasons I don't know.

In any case, you got the e-mail, which is the most important thing.

Silvenga

Does this issue have any correlation with not getting in-site notifications of mentions?

MannDude

mpkossen said: I'm not sure what you're trying to say here...? Gmail has weird SPAM filters sometimes, it tosses good e-mail in the SPAM folder for reasons I don't know.

In any case, you got the e-mail, which is the most important thing.

Sorry, I thought the announcement was made because LET's emails were going to spam and that this change of setup was the solution to remedy that.

mpkossen

@MannDude said:
Sorry, I thought the announcement was made because LET's emails were going to spam and that this change of setup was the solution to remedy that.

Nope. The issue was that some e-mail providers rely solely on SpanHaus' lists and thus were rejecting (not marking as SPAM) all e-mail. Those people should now be receiving e-mail again.

SPAM filters are mostly custom to the user, AFAIK.

concerto49

I've got mine fine. Not going to spam. Thanks.

ChrisMiller

Finally started getting the first ones in my inbox other then in Spam. We are using Zoho as our provider with the standard spam settings.

matthewvz

Now all the emails are going straight to my spam box, unlike before.

IceCream

Outlook.com/Hotmail still blocks the E-Mails.

mpkossen

@IceCream said:
Outlook.com/Hotmail still blocks the E-Mails.

You could check you personal settings at outlook.com. If that's not causing the issue, you should be looking for another e-mail provider. If they're blocking mail coming from Mandrill you're probably going to miss out on a lot of e-mail.

sleddog

mpkossen said: we've started using Mandrill to send automated system

With a dedicated IP?

ricardo

any idea re: hotmail/outlook, i suspect if enough members marked your domain as a safe sender, you'd get unblocked for everyone.

jbiloh

So switching to mandrill actually reduced deliverability?

wych

Just fill the form Outlook.com offers for deliver ability issues and they will respond or speak with Mandrill if your using their services.

However I suspect its an issue their side not to do with mandrill but the history of the domain.

I can confirm the services I have using Mandrill is not blocked in Outlook.com.

Dylan

@mpkossen said:
You could check you personal settings at outlook.com. If that's not causing the issue, you should be looking for another e-mail provider. If they're blocking mail coming from Mandrill you're probably going to miss out on a lot of e-mail.

@jbiloh said:
So switching to mandrill actually reduced deliverability?

Before the switch LET's emails were SPF and DKIM validated and went straight to my Gmail inbox. Now they're not and they go to spam. We know Gmail puts a lot of weight into authentication, so it seems like a safe assumption that the lack of that is at least part of the problem, if not the whole problem?

I use Mandrill as a sender as well and have seen identical emails immediately switch from going into Gmail's spam folder to Gmail's inbox just by setting up SPF and DKIM.

http://help.mandrill.com/entries/22030056-How-do-I-add-DNS-records-for-my-sending-domains-

wych

I would assume they had set up SPF and DKIM as part of the switch to Mandrill?

Dylan

wych said: I would assume they had set up SPF and DKIM as part of the switch to Mandrill?

Nah:

mpkossen

@sleddog said:
With a dedicated IP?

No.

Dylan said: Before the switch LET's emails were SPF and DKIM validated and went straight to my Gmail inbox. Now they're not and they go to spam. We know Gmail puts a lot of weight into authentication, so it seems like a safe assumption that the lack of that is at least part of the problem, if not the whole problem?

I have asked Alex to fix the DKIM. According to Mandrill the SPF record is just fine.

Dylan

mpkossen said: According to Mandrill the SPF record is just fine.

Weird. Gmail didn't see it earlier and I don't see it now -- these are the only TXT and SPF records that come up:

# dig lowendtalk.com txt
...
lowendtalk.com.         299     IN      TXT     "v=spf1 include:lowendbox.com mx a +all"

# dig lowendbox.com txt
...
lowendbox.com.          299     IN      TXT     "v=spf1 mx a ~all"

jbiloh

We had fixed the spf record yesterday actually.

ricardo

This may be helpful. https://www.nccgroup.com/media/481419/wp-us-14-williams-i_know_your_filtering_solution_better_than_you_do-web-1-0.pdf

Steven_F

I don't filter out spam and I've never received an email from the help desk. I don't know if this is related, thought I'd put it out there.

jbiloh

We recently moved the helpdesk's email server too, let us know if its working better as well.

Dylan

Looks like LET emails are coming from the LowEndBox servers again (not Mandrill), and for me they're going into spam.

mpkossen

@Dylan said:
Looks like LET emails are coming from the LowEndBox servers again (not Mandrill), and for me they're going into spam.

Which e-mails are you talking about? PM notifications? Registration e-mail? Helpdesk e-mail?

I just realized the e-mail settings may not have synced across the cluster which results in e-mail not being delivered to some people. I'll ask Alex to look at it.

mpkossen

It seems to be the case that the settings are just on one server. The cluster doesn't have a distributed file system (for core files) so any changes to the configuration I make need to be done manually by Alex. I forgot this was the case as well for e-mail settings.

I'll get this fixed ASAP guys. My apologies for any inconvenience caused.

rds100

Is the cluster still needed in the first place? It's hard to imagien that LET causes so much load that it can't be handled by a single modern dual CPU box. I think there should be enough advertising revenue to pay for this?

Dylan

@mpkossen said:
Which e-mails are you talking about? PM notifications? Registration e-mail? Helpdesk e-mail?

Sounds like you figured it out already but yeah, Vanilla stuff like PM and topic notifications.

mpkossen

@rds100 said:
Is the cluster still needed in the first place? It's hard to imagien that LET causes so much load that it can't be handled by a single modern dual CPU box. I think there should be enough advertising revenue to pay for this?

I think it's mostly to handle peak traffic and possible attacks better, though I'm not sure. I didn't design it.

Ishaq

I noticed that if there's a lot of stuff going on (loads of PMs or highlights) you only get some email notifications, but if it's slow you get all of it. Seems like it's ratelimited?

wych

One has landed this morning in my Outlook.com inbox, nothing else yet or earlier however.

DalekOfSkaro

Actually my confirmation email ended up in the spam folder. I guess it's due to the link or something, IDK. At least I received it!

mpkossen

@Ishaq said:
I noticed that if there's a lot of stuff going on (loads of PMs or highlights) you only get some email notifications, but if it's slow you get all of it. Seems like it's ratelimited?

Nope. There's 1 cluster server that uses Mandrill and the others use the old mailserver. So, you've received an e-mail through Mandrill, I think.

matthewvz

Everything is still going to my spam box

0xdragon

@matthewvz said:
Everything is still going to my spam box

At least you get it

MSPNick

hi,

just a little update that your emails are going through to my spam folder.

Steven_F

@jbiloh said:
We recently moved the helpdesk's email server too, let us know if its working better as well.

Helpdesk e-mails are coming through now. @mpkossen - Any update on my ticket, its been over a week?

mpkossen

@Steven_F said:
Helpdesk e-mails are coming through now. mpkossen - Any update on my ticket, its been over a week?

As long as people keep asking me everywhere when they can get featured I don't have time to reply to tickets.

wych

Any update on my ticket, its been over a week?

I would ask but I figure after 6 months im not getting listed.

As long as people keep asking me everywhere

Just ignore them, like Jon and support threads

mpkossen

wych said: I would ask but I figure after 6 months im not getting listed.

That shouldn't be possible as that ticket would have been closed by now.

wych

@mpkossen said:
That shouldn't be possible as that ticket would have been closed by now.

Strange, I never heard anything so I assumed it wasn't an offer you were after listing.

I might throw another one up for new plans once we have finished internal testing

mpkossen

All LowEndTalk webservers should now be using Mandrill, which should result in all e-mails being delivered.

Corey

@mpkossen said:
All LowEndTalk webservers should now be using Mandrill, which should result in all e-mails being delivered.

I had a pm notification from lowendtalk go to my gmail spam box today.

Delivered-To: redacted
Received: by 10.202.230.74 with SMTP id d71csp310003oih;
Thu, 28 Aug 2014 05:49:51 -0700 (PDT)
X-Received: by 10.152.205.36 with SMTP id ld4mr4213688lac.40.1409230190761;
Thu, 28 Aug 2014 05:49:50 -0700 (PDT)
Return-Path: redacted
Received: from forward2m.mail.yandex.net (forward2m.mail.yandex.net. [37.140.138.2])
by mx.google.com with ESMTPS id k5si5091981laa.119.2014.08.28.05.49.49
for redacted
(version=TLSv1.2 cipher=ECDHE-RSA-AES128-GCM-SHA256 bits=128/128);
Thu, 28 Aug 2014 05:49:50 -0700 (PDT)
Received-SPF: none (google.com: redacted does not designate permitted sender hosts) client-ip=37.140.138.2;
Authentication-Results: mx.google.com;
spf=neutral (google.com: redacted does not designate permitted sender hosts) smtp.mail=redacted;
dkim=pass header.i=@mail16.wdc04.mandrillapp.com;
dmarc=fail (p=NONE dis=NONE) header.from=lowendtalk.com
Received: from mxfront8m.mail.yandex.net (mxfront8m.mail.yandex.net [37.140.138.58])
by forward2m.mail.yandex.net (Yandex) with ESMTP id 4FD695CA1054
for ; Thu, 28 Aug 2014 16:49:49 +0400 (MSK)
Received: from mxfront8m.mail.yandex.net ([127.0.0.1])
by mxfront8m.mail.yandex.net with LMTP id nnT08Zuk
for ; Thu, 28 Aug 2014 16:49:49 +0400
Received: from mail16.wdc04.mandrillapp.com (mail16.wdc04.mandrillapp.com [205.201.139.16])
by mxfront8m.mail.yandex.net (nwsmtp/Yandex) with ESMTPS id dA8twvKoJb-nmgCbLJp;
Thu, 28 Aug 2014 16:49:48 +0400
(using TLSv1.2 with cipher AES256-GCM-SHA384 (256/256 bits))
(Client certificate not present)

eddynetweb

Yeah, my notifications go straight to the Gmail spam box. Is DKIM enabled?

Silvenga

Looks good to my anti-spam. I wonder if Gmail just hates Mandrill App.

205.201.136.22 (bounce-md_...@mandrillapp.com) Message-Score: added -10 (tlsValencePB) for SSL-TLS-connection-OK, total score for this message is now -10
205.201.136.22 (bounce-md_...@mandrillapp.com) to: (...)@...com DKIM-Signature found
205.201.136.22 (bounce-md_...@mandrillapp.com) to: (...)@...com info: domain lowendtalk.com has published a DMARC record
205.201.136.22 (bounce-md_...@mandrillapp.com) to: (...)@...com Message-Score: added -10 (spfpValencePB) for SPF pass, total score for this message is now -20
[MessageOK] 205.201.136.22 (bounce-md_...@mandrillapp.com) to: (...)@...com message ok - [LowEndTalk wych mentioned you in Hilarious convers...th a amazon employee Great Amazon customer service] -) notspam/LowEndTalk_wych_mentioned_you_in_Hilarious_convers--31326.eml

jbiloh

Good to hear, let us know if anything else does not arrive as expected.

I'm going to remove the pin on this thread so that it sinks with inactivity.

Mun

@Silvenga said:
Looks good to my anti-spam. I wonder if Gmail just hates Mandrill App.

> 205.201.136.22 (bounce-md_...mandrillapp.com) Message-Score: added -10 (tlsValencePB) for SSL-TLS-connection-OK, total score for this message is now -10
> 205.201.136.22 (bounce-md_...mandrillapp.com) to: (...)@...com DKIM-Signature found
> 205.201.136.22 (bounce-md_...mandrillapp.com) to: (...)@...com info: domain lowendtalk.com has published a DMARC record
> 205.201.136.22 (bounce-md_...mandrillapp.com) to: (...)@...com Message-Score: added -10 (spfpValencePB) for SPF pass, total score for this message is now -20
> [MessageOK] 205.201.136.22 (bounce-md_...mandrillapp.com) to: (...)@...com message ok - [LowEndTalk wych mentioned you in Hilarious convers...th a amazon employee Great Amazon customer service] -) notspam/LowEndTalk_wych_mentioned_you_in_Hilarious_convers--31326.eml
> 

I use mandrillapp and have zero problems here with gmail.

matthewvz

Still going straight to my spam box edit using gmail.

jbiloh

What email?