By noid on

Am using Drupal 4.6.4. But even with 4.6.3, it has come to my attention that some (or perhaps most) of my new users don't receive the e-mail containing their password. Some users have contacted me about the problem, and at the same time I see in the logs that most users don't get to log in after registering -- I only see the "New user" logs without a "session opened" follow-up.

Any idea what could be wrong? My installation is set up on a shared host.

Have searched this site and found out that this is a recurring problem. Perhaps the Drupal registration process can be improved so as to let the user enter his own password, as suggested in another thread?

⋅ Categories: Drupal 4.6.x

Comments

huc’s picture

huc commented

I had what sounds like a similar problem with the auto generated email not being sent to dot.mac accounts on my new drupal site

Some services received the messages fine, others were bouncing. In particular dot.mac addresses. I received a bounced message to the master drupal email address which gave me a hint. In my case the bounce message had this code snippet in the test message / user I tried to create: (I blocked out items with #####)

<###@mac.com>: host smtp-mx.mac.com[17.250.248.49] said: 553 5.1.8
    <www@######.local... Domain of sender address www@######.local does not
    exist (in reply to MAIL FROM command)

The problem was the .local reference in the domain sender address. My Hosting Service hadn't setup the machine correctly -- they reset the machine so it was a valid domain (i.e. not .local host but the fully qualified domain) and that fixed the problem with users not receiving the automated email containing the password.

I'm not sure if that is the same problem you're experiencing but it's worth double checking any bounced messages your master drupal email account may be receiving. In my case it took an extra day to sort out as I had forgotten to setup the new drupal master email address. The ISP was able to fix the problem in less than 20 minutes based on info. in the bounced mail message.

Sorry i don't know specifically what records they changed server side.

hope that helps
Brian

noid’s picture

noid commented

Hi Brian,

Thanks for replying. I'm not receiving any bounced email messages in my master drupal email account, although it's a gmail account. I'm wondering if I should change it to an email account set up in my hosting account, e.g. myemail@mydomain.com.

Additional info re my problem:
Tested registration using mydomain.com email accounts and they worked. Gmail accounts (and yahoo accounts I think though I still have to verify) are not working right now.

noid’s picture

noid commented

Would like to ask how drupal sends confirmation emails. This may help my host figure things out. Thanks!

noid’s picture

noid commented

Got this reply from my host re my confirmation email problem:

We have a server-wide settings to either enable or disable sending of emails using "nobody". CMS apps like Drupal and Wordpress uses sendmail to send emails to subscribers. This method uses "nobody" as the sender and if we disable this on the server it blocks sending of emails when sendmail is used.

However, with the SMTP method the email sender is autheticated as it logs into an existing email under your domain before sending the email. This way the sender is verified first. This is used as a level of security for the mail server to avoid spamming and to identify which acocunt is responsible for it.

As of the moment, this feature is disabled. Meaning "nobody" is allowed to send emails. Please check from your end if it now works. Otherwise, the SMTP method would be the best alternative.

Indeed, when I look at the header of my confirmation email I see that the "sender" and "return" paths are set to Nobody (nobody@tauren.donutbai.com) even though the "from path" is set to my email address (e.g. mysite@mysite.com). Is this the reason why yahoo and gmail accounts are not accepting my confirmation emails?

Also, I don't really understand what my host is saying about SMTP. Can someone enlighten me? Thanks!

noid’s picture

noid commented

Also saw the following post. I'm not yet sure how it figures into my problem:

Emails sent correctly except for yahoo.com accounts
http://drupal.org/node/35589

akolahi’s picture

akolahi commented

I've had the same problems, sending to yahoo with the standard automatic drupal emails... and the solution that worked for me was using the SMTP Authentication Module.

noid’s picture

noid commented

I have tried the SMTP module for 4.6 and this thread -- http://drupal.org/node/29888 (the latter process was suggested by host), but still no confirmation email.

Hope someone can help.

noid’s picture

noid commented

My site may not be sending any emails to external accounts after all. I've tested yahoo, gmail and hotmail, and didn't receive any confirmation message using any of these email hosts.

noid’s picture

noid commented

Read this -- http://drupal.org/node/37889. So sending with nobody as the header is not my problem since my host allows "nobody" to send. The solution could be, as suggested by my host, that I should send emails or confirmation using SMTP. How do I set this up on a shared server? (Btw feel free to correct me if this is the solution I'm looking for).

Here's how the Configuring Mail Client page on my cPanel looks like:

Manual Settings
Mail Server Username: myusername
Incoming Mail Server: mail.mysite.com
Outgoing Mail Server: mail.mysite.com (server requires authentication)
Supported Incoming Mail Protocols: POP3, POP3S (SSL/TLS), IMAP, IMAPS (SSL/TLS)
Supported Outgoing Mail Protocols: SMTP, SMTPS (SSL/TLS)

packetbrain’s picture

packetbrain commented

for example, if your Drupal servername (the FQDN) is "forums.packetbrain.com" then Yahoo will see "admin@forums.packetbrain.com" as the "Return-Path" address.. even if the "From" addresss you configured in "Site Information" is "something@packetbrain.com"

Yahoo will then try to do a DNS lookup of "forums.packetbrain.com" to see if it exists... if it does not, your email server gets the "550 [PERMFAIL] yahoo.com requires valid sender domain (in reply to RCPT TO command)" **and** the "550 [PERMFAIL] destination not valid within DNS (in reply to RCPT TO command" error

The only way I found to fix this was to add an "A" record in DNS for forums.packetbrain.com

If Drupal could set the "Return-Path" address to match the "From" address, that would eliminate this problem.. but perhaps that is "lower in the stack" than drupal operates (like maybe thats something you would have to setup in sendmail/postfix, etc)

Cheers,
Ken

http://www.packetbrain.com -- Cisco training