VPOP3 Troubleshooting

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VPOP3POSTGRES user has been accidentally deleted

We have seen cases where someone or something has deleted the vpop3postgres account from Windows because they did not recognise it, and thought it may be a hacked account or something. This account is important to VPOP3 because it is the limited-rights account under which the VPOP3DB (PostgreSQL database) runs. vpop3postgres should be an account on the computer where VPOP3 is running. If the computer is an Active Directory server, then the account should be in AD. If it's not an Active Direct...

VPOP3 Webmail slow when using Sophos Antivirus

Several users have recently reported that the VPOP3 Webmail is very slow, and they are using Sophos Antivirus on the VPOP3 computer (with appropriate exclusions etc). We have found that disabling VPOP3's HTTP compression (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTTP_compression) speeds up the access to a large degree. Disabling the compression has the side-effect of making initial download of the Webmail pages much larger (approximately 2.5MB instead of 700kB), but the increased speed more than compensat...

We installed a new router and now nothing works

If you installed a new router on your network and left it at the default settings, you may find that VPOP3 doesn't seem to work afterwards. This is because it may be that the new router allocates new IP addresses on your network. Note that this topic can be quite complicated, so it can be worth seeking expert help. The company which provided the router may be able to help, or we can help with our chargeable support service with more specific help to your particular requirements. Most small net...

Password could not be changed because it is too short

If you are trying to change a user's password in the administration console and you get the error "The Main password could not be changed because it is too short" or "The WebMail password could not be changed because it is too short" then this either means that the password is too short (the minimum password length is set in Settings -> Security Settings -> "Minimum password length") or the password contains invalid characters. Passwords can only contain non-space ASCII characters. So, if...

10503 error when sending messages

> We are occasionally getting the following error when we are sending messages > > VPOP3 encountered a TCP/IP error when sending a message to the remote mail relay server "Our ISP". > The last command that VPOP3 sent was ". <msg terminator>". > The TCP/IP error was "10503 [No More Data]" The 10503 error simply means that VPOP3 sent the message, got up to the 'Message terminator' (at the end of the message) and then the connection to the remote mail server was closed by ...

"550 5.7.1 Recipient not authorised - access denied" error when sending messages

If you get an error "550 5.7.1 <recipient>... Recipient not authorised - access denied" when sending an email from a VPOP3 user, then that means that the permissions for the sending user do not allow sending messages to that email address Edit the User in the VPOP3 settings, go to the Permissions tab, and check the 'Allow sending of Internet mail' and 'Target whitelist' and 'Target Blacklist' options

Problem sending mail to Yahoo mail servers using SMTP Direct sending

Some users have reported problems sending email to Yahoo's mail servers starting in August 2019. It will affect mail to Yahoo email addresses, and also some other email addresses, such as those owned by Yahoo (eg Rocketmail.com) and those who use Yahoo's mail services for their customers (eg Sky.com, Aol.com). This happens if you have VPOP3 configured to "Send using SMTP Direct" and you are using a version of VPOP3 earlier than v7.9 The VPOP3 Errors.log will contain entries like this: OpenS...

Outlook not sending outgoing messages

If Outlook is not sending outgoing messages through VPOP3, it can be a bit hard to diagnose, because Outlook is very bad at error handling, and does not tell the user why it it having problems; the outgoing message will just sit in the 'Outbox' in Outlook. SMTP Authentication A common cause of problems sending mail using Outlook is that it is not configured to use SMTP authentication. Unlike most email clients, by default, Outlook's Account setup wizard will often not enable SMTP authentica...

Autoresponder messages not being sent because VPOP3 tries to send them to an email address like SRS0=.....

You can determine if this is a problem if VPOP3 does not send autoresponse messages to incoming messages, but does to internal messages, and if you go to the Autoresponder settings in VPOP3 and click on 'View Log' the resulting log shows the senders as being email addresses like SRS0=..... rather than the actual senders of the incoming messages. (NB - the log only shows messages received within the "Don't send to same sender within x hours" setting for the autoresponder, so make sure that se...

Why are attachments being blocked by the VPOP3 Attachment Filter?

A problem that sometimes happens is that legitimate attachments are blocked by the VPOP3 Attachment Filter (https://www.pscs.co.uk/manual/attachment_filtering.html), and the administrator is unsure why they were blocked. A common reason is that the attachment has a "double extension", for instance, these filenames would be blocked by the default Attachment Filter Rules. - Proposal.v12.pdf - Invoice (12.03.09).pdf VPOP3 is not blocking them because they're PDFs. It's blocking them bec...

Autoresponder messages not sending due to blank return path

Question: > I am having problems with setting an autoresponder in VPOP3. We are getting an SMTP error which says domain invalid when it tries to send it. The logs show it has responded but it never goes out. > > Below is a screenshot of the error Answer: This problem happens when using an ISP's SMTP relay server which doesn't conform to the complete SMTP standard. It generally happens with those not designed for business use. What is happening is that they are validating...

User can't log in to get or send mail

If a user can't log in to collect or send mail, then the first place to look is the SECURITY.LOG file. This can be accessed from the Settings -> Diagnostics page in the VPOP3 settings, or as a text file in the VPOP3 logging directory (usually the VPOP3\_logs folder). You should be able to find failed login attempts in the SECURITY.LOG file. If the login attempt isn't there, then it is probable that something is blocking the request from reaching VPOP3 at all. This could be a hardware rout...

BCC mail not being delivered

**BCCd mail not being delivered** When VPOP3 is configured to download mail from a shared (catch-all) POP3 mailbox at your ISP, it has to read through the standard message header lines to see who the message is for. It looks at the To, Cc, Received, Apparently-To, Resent-To and Resent-Cc header fields for a recipient it recognises. In most cases this will work fine. However, if the message has been BCCd to you, the recipient address will not be in the message header at all (that is the whole ...

VPOP3DB Service not starting

VPOP3DB is the current name of the VPOP3 instance of PostgreSQL. Earlier versions of VPOP3 used the name 'PostgreSQL' or 'PostgreSQL-VPOP3'. - [1069 - Login Failure - error when starting VPOP3DB service](https://wiki.pscs.co.uk/how_to:1069_-_login_failure_-_error_when_starting_vpop3db_service) - [Timeout while VPOP3DB is starting](https://wiki.pscs.co.uk/how_to:timeout_while_vpop3db_is_starting) If the PostgreSQL service doesn't start, or starts and immediately stops, there are a couple of thi...

VPOP3 is sending out lots of spam which we didn't send

There are three main reasons this can happen: * VPOP3 is configured as an open relay. That means that you have set it so that anyone on the Internet can send outgoing messages through your VPOP3 server, without logging in. The default settings in VPOP3 will prevent this from happening. Often it happens because someone has tried to configure VPOP3 to allow mobile workers to send email from outside the office, but hasn't set that authentication is required. * A user's username/password has ...

Incoming message isn't being delivered to user

Sometimes you may see an incoming message in the VPOP3 status, or know that someone has sent a message to you, but it is not arriving as expected. There are many reasons this can happen, such as it being quarantined by the spam filter, or a configuration setting making the message go somewhere else. Current versions of VPOP3 have a 'Message Trace' function where you can search for the message, by sender or subject, and VPOP3 will display the key decisions it made about that message, and where ...

Monitoring database activity

Sometimes, for diagnostic purposes, you may wish to see what the PostgreSQL database server is doing at any time. This can be useful if VPOP3 is taking a long time to start (eg after an upgrade) or if the server is struggling because it's so busy. All you need to do is open a command prompt and navigate to the VPOP3 installation directory (http://www.7tutorials.com/command-prompt-how-use-basic-commands) then type 'psql' (the default password here is 'vpop3pass'). Then, at the prompt, type sel...

Finding archived messages after the files have been moved from outside of VPOP3

> I have moved the VPOP3 archived message files to another location without using the VPOP3 GUI and now I want to find one of these old archived messages. This can be tricky . You could: - copy all the files back into the VPOP3 archive directory so that VPOP3 can find it, or, - find the file manually. This is quite complicated - see below - but will probably be quicker than copying all the files back so that VPOP3 can find them. To find the archived file manually If you do an archi...

Webmail date format is incorrect

> It has been reported to us that the date in webmail is showing in American format. > I cant find where to change this. Can you let me know where please. The Webmail software detects this from the web browser, so it is not set in VPOP3, but it should use the regional settings on the computer running the web browser (assuming the browser passes the details through to Javascript correctly, which all current browsers do as far as we are aware). In some browsers, eg Google Chrome, the w...

Lua scripts get renamed to .old files

In VPOP3 v6.6 and earlier, Lua scripts are stored as separate files in the VPOP3 installation directory. If you wanted to back them up you would need to copy them separately, and they had to be edited from outside VPOP3. In v6.7 and later, they are stored in the VPOP3 database, so that they are backed up/moved/etc along with everything else, and so that you can edit them from within VPOP3 itself in Settings -> Scripts. If you make a Lua script file in the VPOP3 directory, then VPOP3 will im...

Problem connecting to some remote servers using STARTTLS

> We are having problems connecting to some (but not all) remote SMTP servers using STARTTLS We have found the problem. VPOP3 is first trying to connect using SSLv2. (This protocol isn't secure, so *most* servers will reject this attempt). With one server, the server is saying 'no, try TLS1.0 instead', so VPOP3 connects using TLS1.0 and all is good With the other server, the server is saying 'no, go away', and is then closing the connection. If you tell VPOP3 not to try SSLv2, ...

552 5.2.3 Message too large - contact your administrator

Or 552 5.2.3 Message exceeds fixed maximum message size If this error message is coming from VPOP3 when you are sending a message, it means that the message you are sending is prohibited by your VPOP3 settings. There are two places where the size limit could be set. * In Services → SMTP Server → General - the Maximum Message Size setting (https://wiki.pscs.co.uk/_detail/how_to:smtpsize.png?id=how_to%3A552_5.2.3_message_too_large_-_contact_your_administrator) * In the user se...

"Server access temporarily blocked" error

Error message: Your connection has been blocked temporarily - Try again later If you get an error message in your email client software saying Your connection has been blocked temporarily - Try again later or Server access temporarily blocked! Please try again later, or Client IP address (aa.bb.cc.dd) blocked this means the Intrusion Prevention System (IPS) in VPOP3 has detected abnormal behaviour from your IP address, and it has applied a temporary block to prevent abusive behaviour. There a...

Problem installing VPOP3 on Windows 2003 or Windows XP

When trying to install VPOP3 on Windows XP or Windows Server 2003, after entering the licence key, you may get the error: Unable to check license key state: An error occurred in the secure channel support This is due to a bug in Windows XP/2003 which can be fixed by installing this hotfix. https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/968730

10060 error reported by VPOP3

> Recently Vpop3 has suddenly started generating POP3 connection errors like this on every connection. I have spoken to the hosting company and they do not feel that anything has changed. Please could you let me have your opinion / advice on this. > > Thank you in advance, > > Pop3 Client not started - Couldn't connect to server OurISP (1). > > Error:10060 [A connection attempt failed because the connected party did not properly respond after a period of time, or esta...

Problem validating certificates in VPOP3 Enterprise SSL settings

> When trying to replace the SSL certificate in VPOP3, I get the following error: > > Error verifying certificate chain There was a problem with the validation routine in v6.17-v6.19 with some certificates. This problem should be fixed in 6.20 You can edit the HTML file to disable the validation so VPOP3 just accepts the certificate even if it's wrong as it did with 6.16 and earlier. To do this, open the VPOP3\_webmail\admin\services.html file in a text editor (eg Notepad) . Fi...

SPF rejections when sending mail through the PSCS SMTP relay service

> Hello, > > We have recently started to receive SPF rejections from certain customers when sending mail via your service. > > I understand we need to add yourselves into our SPF record to allow sending via your service and to not be rejected > > Could you advise what we would need to add to prevent the rejections in future? > > Our current record looks like this: > > v=spf1 include:spf.myisp.com -all Add include:spf.vpop3mail.com before the...

Finding trace of deleted message

> Months ago I think I might have accidentally deleted an email that I now > need proof that I received. I don't suppose there is any kind of log > file that might prove I had received it is there? > > Historical Logging is switched on. :-) OK, so, assuming the logging keeps data for far enough back, it should at least tell you that you received the message, but it won't hold the message content. > example.com was the sender Assuming 'example.com' was in the send...

"Immediately copy messages" option cannot be checked in IE7

> Using Internet Explorer 7, in a user's 'Routing' options, I am unable to check the "Immediately copy messages already in this user's Inbox to assistant(s)" box. Have you tried with a different web browser? The web page should pop up a confirmation window when you check that box. It may be that some web browser setting is preventing it from displaying that window. In other versions of Internet Explorer, there's an option "Allow websites to prompt for information using scripted windo...

VPOP3 poll 'not stopping'

**What happens** If the VPOP3 poll doesn't seem to stop, then it may be that the automatic update process has stuck. You may also notice that there is a long running 'MOTD' (Message Of The Day) session in Status -> Active Sessions. The MOTD session performs other tasks such as upgrades as well. **Possible fix** We have found a situation where, for some reason, the VPOP3 installation directory as marked as 'read-only' in Windows. This causes the automatic update process to 'lock' (actua...

"550 Relaying denied. IP name possibly forged" error when sending mail

> I am getting these messages from time-to-time. Any idea why? These are > addresses that I have sent emails to before, without a problem. > From: Mailer_Daemon@example.com > Sent: 13 July 2016 18:10 > To: Postmaster@example.com > Subject: Delivery Status (Message Send Error) > > Your message (ID:) could not be delivered to the recipients below See the > delivery status below for more information > - joe@example.net > > VPOP3 was trying to send...

-ERR Mailbox Locked error

If your email client displays an '-ERR Mailbox Locked' or '-ERR [IN-USE] Mailbox Locked' error when trying to log into VPOP3 it means that the mailbox is locked. The POP3 standard requires that POP3 mailboxes have an 'exclusive lock' on them when they are in use. This means that only one POP3 client can access the mailbox at once. Also, if a POP3 mailbox is currently accessing a mailbox, then no IMAP4, Webmail or administrator access is allowed to the mailbox at the same time. If you require t...

VPOP3's AutoUpdate process failed with error code 258.

Error 258 is a Windows 'Timeout' error. VPOP3 waits 30 minutes for the updater to complete its checks. It is very unlikely to take this long to check for and install any updates, so the usual reason for this problem is some security software blocking the updater from working. Because the updater silently downloads files from the Internet and installs them, it is possible that security software will see this as suspicious behaviour. In this case, you can either disable the automatic updates (Set...

Reset Webmail/Admin Access Restrictions

**VPOP3 Version 6.6 or later** VPOP3 v6.6 and later come with a utility which will check the settings and offer to reset them to the defaults for you. * Go to a command prompt in the VPOP3 directory (eg Start → Run → cmd (enter), then type cd \vpop3) * Run vpop3settings resetperms and follow the prompts For earlier versions of VPOP3, see below. **VPOP3 Version 5 to 6.5** **Reset Webmail Access Restrictions** You can follow the steps below to clear the Webmail access rest...

Problems accessing VPOP3 settings

If you have problems accessing the VPOP3 settings: * Go to Start → Programs → VPOP3 → Configure VPOP3 on the VPOP3 computer. That should open up a web browser and take you to the login page * If VPOP3 doesn't show the login page, and shows a '403' error page instead, that means that the access restrictions for the WebMail service have been restricted so that this computer cannot access the WebMail service. * Log in using your VPOP3 administrator login details. If you have forgotten thes...

Data stream contained NUL character

**Description of the problem** NUL characters (bytes with value 0) are not allowed in email messages and should not be transmitted over POP3, SMTP or IMAP4 except in certain circumstances. If an attachment contains such a byte it must be encoded using _Base64_ or _Quoted-Printable_ encoding so that the transmitted data doesn't contain a NUL character. In some cases, messages will arrive at VPOP3 which do contain such characters. This is usually due to a bug in the upstream mail server which h...

Lost administrator password

The administrator password is the same password as used for collecting email by a user who is set up as an administrator in VPOP3. It is not a separate password, so if the administrator can remember his or her email password that is the same as the administrator password. The details are case sensitive, so ensure that you are entering capital and lower case letters as appropriate. If someone else installed the VPOP3 software for you and did not tell you the password, then you should contact th...

Quarantine Report has invalid links

When VPOP3 generates the daily spam filter Quarantine report, it puts links in to allow easy viewing/release of the quarantined messages. In some situations, these links may not work - for instance, if you are accessing your VPOP3 from across the Internet, or if you have changed the IP address of the VPOP3 computer. VPOP3 gets the 'host' part of the link from the setting in Settings -> Spamfilter -> General -> Quarantine Settings (https://www.pscs.co.uk/manual/spamfilter_general_quara...

Licence activation not working

When VPOP3 is started it will validate the licence key online to make sure that your licence allows you to run the installed version of VPOP3 (this is to avoid us needing to issue new licence keys every few months (and you needing to keep track of them)). In the majority of cases this will work automatically without any intervention from you. However, in some cases, people may have tightened security on their Internet connections so much that VPOP3 cannot connect to the licence activation serve...

VPOP3 Spamfilter False Positives

As with any spam filter solution, the VPOP3 spam filter can, and probably will, generate false positives. These are messages which VPOP3's spam filter thinks are spam, but which actually aren't. On the mail we receive at PSCS, the false positive rate is around 2 or 3 in every 5000 detected spam messages. That's about a 0.04% - 0.06% rate. However, different users may have different false positive detection rates. For instance: * you may receive mail which looks like some types of spam me...

Duplicated Messages

If you get duplicate messages, then there are several common reasons for this: **Multiple POP3 mailboxes on the ISP** If your ISP gives you one POP3 mailbox for each VPOP3 user, then you have to tell VPOP3 which user each mailbox is associated with. If you don't do this, then when a message is sent to two VPOP3 users, each user will receive two copies of that message. To link each ISP mailbox with a VPOP3 user, go to the VPOP3 Mail Connectors → Mail Collectors page. Then, for each Mail Col...