Notification Email Lag Time

[Karma]

Sometimes it's minutes, but sometimes it's hours and they come out of order. It's not a big deal since I check my bookmarks pretty frequently anyway, but it's been going on for the past couple days.

[Vekseid]

Some mails are put into a queue rather than immediately sent, by the forum software itself, and then again by the mailserver software, which handles thousands of e-mails during some hours, and then again by your mail host.

Make sure webmaster@elliquiy.com is in your whitelist/contacts, though this will probably only make a real difference when I implement DMARC for the domain.

[Karma]

It's only notable to me because they've been so snappy over the years.

[Beguile's Mistress]

What has been occurring are gaps in notifications sometimes longer than an hour and while some are sent through after that others aren't; PM notifications most notably.

[Karma]

Yep, that sounds the same as what I'm getting.

[Oniya]

Saw a public service message from Veks about an issue with Google (probably caused by someone flagging notification emails as spam). 

It should eventually get sorted out, but making sure that elliquiy.com is on your white-list is always a good thing.

[Karma]

I get every email, just often hours later. They're never in spam.

[Oniya]

*nods*  Likewise.  But because of what someone else did, (possibly several someones, more than likely on the newish side) Google has flagged stuff from Elliquiy as 'potentially spam'.  If you use Gmail, this is probably what's affecting your delivery time.

[Karma]

Funky. I'll try that out then.

[Oniya]

Checked the process on my own account - bring up one of the notification messages, and on the right side you should see 'webmaster' above the actual email that the notifications are sent from.  There's a little down arrow under that for 'more actions'.   Set it to 'Always show' (the default is 'Auto').

[Beguile's Mistress]

That would block all email from Elliquiy all the time until the watch is lifted.

Now I get spurts of email notifications with long lags between and many notifications missing.  There are periods where the system works fine and a PM notification is sent right away.  I still don't have notifications for emails I received between 2:00 am and 5:00 am Eastern Time.  I have this thread on notify and haven't received any for posts #5 on down. 

EDIT:  Haven't received anything since 10:01 am.

[Karma]

I added it, so I guess I'll wait and see.

[Beguile's Mistress]

After a string of notifications at 10:47 I got #8 from this thread and nothing from #5 on down and still missing the emails sent overnight.

[Vekseid]

Alright, getting help from Google isn't easy

Go here, please

1) Make a simple, straightforward report, follow the instructions.
2) Do not make more than one report.

Obviously, this only applies if using a gmail address... it seems unusual though that they'd suddenly complain after so many years, it feels buggy.

[Oreo]

Done did. I hope it helps.

[Beguile's Mistress]

I've done my bit.  Sorry for being a pain.

[AmberStarfire]

I've only had PM notifications and haven't missed any (as far as I'm aware) but they've been slow to arrive. Some really slow.

Should we still fill in a report if we're still getting the message and they're not sent to our spam folders?

[flubber]

I think that it's a problem in general with gmail as I have been having problems like this with Gmail for a long time.  I went to moving any messages that are in spam in to the inbox. Then I move them to one of my folders. It's a scut but at least I know where everything is and I can make sure that I can keep them. Also, I tend to find that if I move stuff from spam to the inbox it often stays in the inbox the next time I get a message.

[Vekseid]

I think that it's a problem in general with gmail as I have been having problems like this with Gmail for a long time.  I went to moving any messages that are in spam in to the inbox. Then I move them to one of my folders. It's a scut but at least I know where everything is and I can make sure that I can keep them. Also, I tend to find that if I move stuff from spam to the inbox it often stays in the inbox the next time I get a message.

It does help if you add webmaster@elliquiy.com to your contact list.

In addition, you can setup a filter for @elliquiy.com mails, which should guarantee it skips spam.

I've only had PM notifications and haven't missed any (as far as I'm aware) but they've been slow to arrive. Some really slow.

Should we still fill in a report if we're still getting the message and they're not sent to our spam folders?

Pretty sure I've seen yours getting deferred, also : /

I'm going to be moving the mailserver early so that I can get a better grip on this and get some of the staff to help me manage the abuse/webmaster stuff... as a single human being I simply cannot handle the volume with what Elliquiy puts out.

[AmberStarfire]

Ah okay. In that case a report might be in order.

[Moraline]

Whatever it is, you should be free and clear. Not sure why google is spazzing out. Most providers use cross referencing with other blacklists for throttling mail reports.

As of right now according to http://mxtoolbox.com

Checking elliquiy.com against 109 known blacklists...
Listed 0 times with 7 timeouts ((ignore the timeouts)

This is the only issue that I see:
SMTP Reverse DNS Resolution || Reverse DNS FAILED!
~ http://community.mxtoolbox.com/blog/what-does-the-warning-reverse-dns-failed-mean-smtp-diagnostic-tool/

Don't you have a PTR record? Failing a reverse lookup might put you on auto throttle or total failure with some spam filters.

[Vekseid]

...no one would be getting any meaningful amount of mail if we didn't have fcrdns working. Our mx is actually trancephalon.com (what I run Elliquiy proper under), but elliquiy.com also has fcrdns... are you sure you didn't typo or something?

[steelsmiter]

I'm ok with my 6 hour lag but I hope that it doesn't just stop sending them...

[Vekseid]

Well if deferrals pass four days then they'll get removed from the queue.

[Vekseid]

Oh.

ptr:174.34.164.130   

Error

 
Lookup failed after 12 name servers timed out or responded non-authoritatively

mxtoolbox has apparently gone full stupid. Happens.

Regardless, I set up ptr records for most of my ips, as a rule.

[Ravensahnk]

I had this issue a year or two ago with this website and Gmail.  Google for some reason is just a pain in the ass (but I'm stubborn and enjoy it), I haven't received anything since late Tuesday Evening.  I did manage to get only one email from the morning on Wednesday, but that was only perhaps a few minutes ago after refreshing it constantly.  I have checked my notifications and the count is up to approximately five emails unaccounted for.  :\  It's frustrating, and I did file a claim ticket with Google and E is on my white list and Circles, however nothing is still showing up, and I did just check my Spam box as well and nothing.

[Vekseid]

More mail seems to be getting through now, but the current backlog stands at 1811 mails for gmail and it's basically random whose get retried during the small windows in which gmail accepts.

I'm going to temporarily disable all notifications for members who use gmail so that people who are registering, resetting passwords, etc. can get mails. Please refrain from re-enabling them until I give the okay.

[Vekseid]

Should probably note 'cuz it's not obvious

There were still ~1800 affected mails in the queue when I turned off notifications for gmail users. So if you've got one of those 1800 you're still going to get that, eventually (has sent about a hundred of them so far).

[Ember Star]

I'm still getting notifications

[AurelieCatena]

Notifications have been random and with long delay since at least yesterday. I am on Gmail too. I hope this will soon be solved as I use the notifications a lot.

[Oniya]

Veks has turned off notifications to gmail for a bit, to allow the backlog to go down and to give new sign-ups a fighting chance of getting their verification email.  There will be an announcement when they can be turned back on.

[Vekseid]

Oh fuck.

Spamhaus has dropped the entire /18 we belong to into their sbl.

That explains what is going on, at least.

[steelsmiter]

is there anything individual users can do at that point?

[Oniya]

sbl = Spam BlackList, I presume?

What's a /18?

[Oreo]

sbl = Spam BlackList, I presume?

What's a /18?

I am assuming the 1800 held/missing emails mentioned above.

[shooter6806]

Just fyi I got 2 email notifications today (yes, on gmail) about PMs from another member, but the PMs don't appear on my PM inbox. 

[Geraint]

sbl = Spam BlackList, I presume?

What's a /18?

It's a bit over 16,000 IP addresses in CIDR notation, a lot of territory.

In this case it's
174.34.128.0/18
which is everything from
174.34.128.0 to
174.34.191.255

[Vekseid]

Just fyi I got 2 email notifications today (yes, on gmail) about PMs from another member, but the PMs don't appear on my PM inbox.

They'd have been delayed by nearly a day at this point, you probably already read the pms?

[Geil]

I'd heard there were delays so hadn't been worrying too much about it, but I've just checked my mail logs and I haven't had anything from E for almost exactly two days (Aug  9 07:45:28 BST) and I don't use gmail. I have at least two or three chat threads on notify so I know at the very least there should have been some activity e-mailed to me overnight both nights.

(Where I can control it I have others' spam filtering turned off and just use my own Bayesian filter locally. Ah, but stuff from E doesn't even go through that filter.)

[Ravensahnk]

Geil, Veks actually disabled email notification for a few days, in a previous post in this thread (or it may be in the "Well Fuck" post he made a day or so ago) but they are disabled and he said to give it a couple of days before enabling them.  I hadn't received anything over the past couple of days and then suddenly yesterday I started to receive emails about posts that had been made on Tuesday or Wednesday.  I would wait until Sunday Evening at the latest before setting up emails again.  Unless Veks says otherwise.

[Geil]

Ah, sorry. I misunderstood. I thought they'd only been completely disabled for those going to gmail accounts.

[Vekseid]

Mail providers don't like to see huge spikes in mail traffic. We'd been pushing a thousand emails an hour.

[Beguile's Mistress]

Too bad their algorithms can't factor in the number of users on a site when they look at those numbers and see we are a busy place as far as posting goes.  Knowing the type of site we are would be a with interpreting the traffic, too, since all of it is intrasite to begin with.

[swedeboy]

I was going to start a new thread which is kind of related to this issue but I thought it would be better to just bring it up here.

Well, my notification settings keep getting changed all by themselves! I request notifications by email for PMs and Topic Replies, and today, I noticed they were changed to 'NEVER.' So I fixed the issue and got notifications back in my email. And a few hours later, I again stopped getting notifications and I went to the Account Settings and the settings were again changed to 'Never.'

Any idea what is wrong?

[Karma]

Read the whole thread.

[Rogue]

This one as well: https://elliquiy.com/forums/index.php?topic=182079.msg8720248#msg8720248