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The Mighty 38

macrumors newbie
Original poster
May 30, 2004
11
0
Dundee, Scotland.
Hello. I am having a very strange problem with my OSX Mail software, heres what has happened: On Monday my Shared Hosting company server that deals with my mail crashed. It was restored from a backup and everything was online again by Monday night. On Tuesday morning I realised I hadn't recieved any mail (not even any Junk!), so I phone the hosting company to check everything is ok... 'its is' they say and I go and check all my settings and even set up on a new Mac to double check, this Mac logs in and receives all mail until the 20th August and stops. No error, just stops like nothing more is there, I use Console to telnet the mail account and it confirms that I have a lot of mail to be picked up but mail doesn't think so... I use an online mail browser and this works fine and I can acces the missing mail, next step is to dust of Entourage and set up my account in there to see what it will do as i haven't used it for ages it pulls down all the mail up until the 20th August before chiming and telling me 'a connection failure has occured', back on the phone to the hosting company and I mail them my telnet results and wait, and wait, and wait... finally they get back to me to tell me its not them its me, they tell me to search the web and check my settings! :( So I am running out of help fast... anyone have any idea what's happening?

thanks in advance.

TM38.
 

Les Kern

macrumors 68040
Apr 26, 2002
3,063
76
Alabama
"Search the web, and check your settings"? Sounds to me like a blow-off. They probably looked at the admin console to see if mail was running, and that your account existed.

I have had only one instance where something similar, but NOT exactly happened.
But first, does this service offer web-based mail, like Hotmail? If it does, and it works there, then obviously it is indeed you, and not them.
A while back I was using a product called Tenon's iTools. One flaw (in an EARLY release of this excellent product) was an issue with permissions on the home mail folder when a crash, OR accessing the account info from a remote site on the admin console. When it happened, I'd have to ssh in and chown the user's folder in order for them to get mail.

Actually, I would insist they set up your account on THEIR end, and see if THEY can get your mail. Mail is not rocket science to set up on a client. It IS rocket science to most admins, like me. Be sure you're set up right, and push for an answer.
 

The Mighty 38

macrumors newbie
Original poster
May 30, 2004
11
0
Dundee, Scotland.
I am having them look at setting the account up at thier end just now. I fail to see how it could be at my end if it happens on different macs and different mail browsers, but you are right it does work when I log in to my account through a browser.
 

seamuskrat

macrumors 6502a
Feb 17, 2003
898
19
New Jersey USA
To test, download Eudora, or some other shareware mail app. See if you can pick up mail from the server. If it works, then something in the Mail prefs could be trashed.

Chances are if the new app fails, then the server has some problem.

If a good POP app reads mail until the date of crash, then its definately the server end. I would archive what mail you need from webmail, and they may need to wipe your mail database. Are they running Apache? IIS? That makes a difference about how they can attempt to correct it.
 

The Mighty 38

macrumors newbie
Original poster
May 30, 2004
11
0
Dundee, Scotland.
I have tried Eudora too and it gives me a similar error to Entourage but goes into a little more detail. It says: TCP/IP Error. -3162; The server is not responding. {37:632}

Again it stops recieving at the 20th August.
 
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