Hi Support,
We are trialling the latest 9.58 before rollout and are finding the Email Test is intermittantly detecting the filters we put in place for bad and good email.
We are using the subject line only with an express:
("Hello" and "World)
The problem is very strange as when we click the test button 9 times out of ten we get: Normal []
Occassionally we get the subject line displaying in the reply to indicate its found a good or bad email.
In a nutshell the Email Test appears to be very hit and miss. We have tried multiple mail servers as we thought it might have been the mail server but its not. We need the email test to work 100% of the time as its monitoring critical mailboxes. We can't afford for it to detect email 10% of the time.
IMAP and POP3 are behaving the same in our tests.
Is anyone else seeing very inconsistent results with Email Test.
Email Test intermittantly detecting emails
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KS-Soft Europe
- Posts: 2832
- Joined: Tue May 16, 2006 4:41 am
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Your expression is incorrect.
Should be:
("Hello" and "World")
Please note, EMail test detects only new e-mails.
What test settings do you use for EMail test?
May we get access to one of email accounts tested by you with "not detected" emails?
Please send test details and e-mail account info to support@ks-soft.net
Should be:
("Hello" and "World")
Please note, EMail test detects only new e-mails.
What test settings do you use for EMail test?
May we get access to one of email accounts tested by you with "not detected" emails?
Please send test details and e-mail account info to support@ks-soft.net
Thanks Support I forgot to include that in my forum post:
I did have the correct expression as per your post.
I have been doing alot of trouble shooting and have found the following.
We have about 50 email tests (It growing more by the day) that fire off at 6pm every day.
Each email test does exactly that same thing but executes the test against a different mailbox.
Example:
Email test 1 checks mailbox test1@test.com at 6pm
Email test 2 checks mailbox test2@test.com at 6pm
And so on. We have about 50 of these that are executed at the same time on different mailboxes.
In some cases some of the tests come back with a result. In other cases some of the tests just come back with nothing.
I tried the following:
1. Run each mail test on it own = It works as expected
2. Run two tests at one time = It works as expected
3. Run three or more tests at one time = Most likely on of them will fail
Again each test is testing a seperate mailbox with the same test method. The problems where having is that the email test won't come back with the desired results if where testing alot of mailboxes at once.
To test connectivity we also changed the reply field from Subject to Time.
When we did this we found that all tests where able to receive a reply time which is normally about 400ms. This means that the test successfully logged into the mailbox but was not able to retrieve the desired information.
To reproduce this on your end do the following:
1. Create 10+ mailboxes
2. Create 10 identical email rules that check 10 different mailboxes
3. Execute all email tests at the same time
4. The result is that some will work and others will not.
Let me know your thoughts.
I did have the correct expression as per your post.
I have been doing alot of trouble shooting and have found the following.
We have about 50 email tests (It growing more by the day) that fire off at 6pm every day.
Each email test does exactly that same thing but executes the test against a different mailbox.
Example:
Email test 1 checks mailbox test1@test.com at 6pm
Email test 2 checks mailbox test2@test.com at 6pm
And so on. We have about 50 of these that are executed at the same time on different mailboxes.
In some cases some of the tests come back with a result. In other cases some of the tests just come back with nothing.
I tried the following:
1. Run each mail test on it own = It works as expected
2. Run two tests at one time = It works as expected
3. Run three or more tests at one time = Most likely on of them will fail
Again each test is testing a seperate mailbox with the same test method. The problems where having is that the email test won't come back with the desired results if where testing alot of mailboxes at once.
To test connectivity we also changed the reply field from Subject to Time.
When we did this we found that all tests where able to receive a reply time which is normally about 400ms. This means that the test successfully logged into the mailbox but was not able to retrieve the desired information.
To reproduce this on your end do the following:
1. Create 10+ mailboxes
2. Create 10 identical email rules that check 10 different mailboxes
3. Execute all email tests at the same time
4. The result is that some will work and others will not.
Let me know your thoughts.
In addition to the above we have tested this on a Windows 7, Windows 8 and Server 2012.
All results are the same.
I also thought it might have been a problem with the mail server denying so many connections at once but that is not the case as the test reported a successful login to the mailbox otherwise if it was not able to login successfully the test result more than likely should of returned "Unknown"
Please try and reproduce the error using the steps I have provided above and let me know what you think.
All results are the same.
I also thought it might have been a problem with the mail server denying so many connections at once but that is not the case as the test reported a successful login to the mailbox otherwise if it was not able to login successfully the test result more than likely should of returned "Unknown"
Please try and reproduce the error using the steps I have provided above and let me know what you think.
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KS-Soft Europe
- Posts: 2832
- Joined: Tue May 16, 2006 4:41 am
- Contact:
Could you please be morespecific: what is test Status and Reply string?In some cases some of the tests come back with a result. In other cases some of the tests just come back with nothing.
If EMail test returned not Unknown status and reply that means there were no problems with it. Why do you think it hasn't retrieved desired information?When we did this we found that all tests where able to receive a reply time which is normally about 400ms. This means that the test successfully logged into the mailbox but was not able to retrieve the desired information.
different mailboxes but same server? 10 different mail servers?4. The result is that some will work and others will not.
We have currently 65 EMail test, setup for 4 different mail servers. All EMail tests can run simultaneously without problems. Sometimes, Gmail server returns Status: Unknown Reply: NO [ALERT] Too many simultaneous connections. (Failure).
However that is not problem of HostMonitor - that is mail server rules.
Could you check your mail server logs?
Thanks Support,
We have also added the following string to return a "warning" when no email is found or the subject line is blank. As our rule tests the subject line its also important to bee notified when no email arrives:
("%MailSUBJ%"=="")
Most of the replies we get after adding the above string are now warnings. This leads me to believe that when its processing the emails its not processing the subject line properly. How ever when I refresh the test once or twice it often processes the email properly and I get a reply with the subject line and the status of the alert is "Ok".
The mail server is hosted with an ISP but I have also tried this on other platforms as well and still have the same results.
When searching the forums I found one or two other posts with similar problems but none to this extent.
By the way I think the response times from you guys is absolutely fantastic.
Keep up the great work.
We have also added the following string to return a "warning" when no email is found or the subject line is blank. As our rule tests the subject line its also important to bee notified when no email arrives:
("%MailSUBJ%"=="")
Most of the replies we get after adding the above string are now warnings. This leads me to believe that when its processing the emails its not processing the subject line properly. How ever when I refresh the test once or twice it often processes the email properly and I get a reply with the subject line and the status of the alert is "Ok".
The mail server is hosted with an ISP but I have also tried this on other platforms as well and still have the same results.
When searching the forums I found one or two other posts with similar problems but none to this extent.
By the way I think the response times from you guys is absolutely fantastic.
Keep up the great work.
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KS-Soft Europe
- Posts: 2832
- Joined: Tue May 16, 2006 4:41 am
- Contact:
That it normal when there are no new e-mails satisfying Bad/Good filter.("%MailSUBJ%"=="")
Most of the replies we get after adding the above string are now warnings.
That means, during first check, email server returns reply with no new emails that fit filter condition. During next checks, e-mail server provides information about new emails and EMail test can "see"/detect these e-mails.How ever when I refresh the test once or twice it often processes the email properly and I get a reply with the subject line and the status of the alert is "Ok".
Could you test some public e-mail servers like Gmail or Yahoo, so we could make tests with the same server and receive similar results?
Please note, depending on protocol (POP3/IMAP/...) e-mails can be "seen" with different time intervals. E.g. gmail web interface and POP3 protocol may show incoming e-mails, while IMAP may "see" these e-mails 10 seconds later.
Thank you!By the way I think the response times from you guys is absolutely fantastic.
Keep up the great work.
Thanks Support,
We know there are genuine new emails in the mailbox that fit the filter conditions. I log into the webmail interface and can see the emails there.
However the test still returns a warning when testing multiple mailboxes simultaneously at once.
I might try and change the filter from "Subject" to "Sender" and see if I get the same results.
My feeling is when it's processing multiple emails with the filter subject it's not working properly. It's ok for 1 or 2 tests but when trying to process the subject of many emails at once it's not coming back with the desired results even when we know there is genuine email in all mailboxes. It's now always coming back with a warning even with new email.
I will run the tests based on filter for "Sender" and let you know how it goes.
Appreciate your support.
We know there are genuine new emails in the mailbox that fit the filter conditions. I log into the webmail interface and can see the emails there.
However the test still returns a warning when testing multiple mailboxes simultaneously at once.
I might try and change the filter from "Subject" to "Sender" and see if I get the same results.
My feeling is when it's processing multiple emails with the filter subject it's not working properly. It's ok for 1 or 2 tests but when trying to process the subject of many emails at once it's not coming back with the desired results even when we know there is genuine email in all mailboxes. It's now always coming back with a warning even with new email.
I will run the tests based on filter for "Sender" and let you know how it goes.
Appreciate your support.
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KS-Soft Europe
- Posts: 2832
- Joined: Tue May 16, 2006 4:41 am
- Contact:
Hi Support,
Thank you for pointing me to the write location. We found the following:
As each of our mail test was located in a different folder and they where all running at the same time our ISP was denying the connection. We managed to see the NO ANSWER in reply when we removed the following expression from warnings.
("%MailSUBJ%"=="")
Once we removed that I than so NO ANSWER for all tests.
My thoughts here are the ISP firewall / POP server are limiting the amount of simultaneous connections to there server. I than did the following:
I moved all my email tests into one folder. I than set the properties of that folder so tests do not run simultaneously. I than proceeded to create links to the tests in each folder as I had it before.
What I than did was run all the tests in the folder I created at once and I saw that it was queuing each test with the word "Checking". I managed to get a very high success rate with this method.
If I continue to receive problems I will let you know.
Many thanks for your assistance.
Thank you for pointing me to the write location. We found the following:
As each of our mail test was located in a different folder and they where all running at the same time our ISP was denying the connection. We managed to see the NO ANSWER in reply when we removed the following expression from warnings.
("%MailSUBJ%"=="")
Once we removed that I than so NO ANSWER for all tests.
My thoughts here are the ISP firewall / POP server are limiting the amount of simultaneous connections to there server. I than did the following:
I moved all my email tests into one folder. I than set the properties of that folder so tests do not run simultaneously. I than proceeded to create links to the tests in each folder as I had it before.
What I than did was run all the tests in the folder I created at once and I saw that it was queuing each test with the word "Checking". I managed to get a very high success rate with this method.
If I continue to receive problems I will let you know.
Many thanks for your assistance.
-
KS-Soft Europe
- Posts: 2832
- Joined: Tue May 16, 2006 4:41 am
- Contact:
Spoke to Soon support,
Found another weird problem.
Working - If we select all the email tests at once and run them it comes back with the desired result and the test works perfectly. We do this using the RCC client or Host Monitor client directly off the server. The tests only work using either client.
Not Working - If we wait for the 6pm schedule the tests start but the result is never received. It's like it doesn't read the email on the schedule. We know there are genuine emails in there as well.
Tested with POP and IMAP.
We are testing this on Windows Server 2012 64bit edition.
- UAC disabled
I have checked the HM logs and found it does actually run the tests.
Any thoughts?
Found another weird problem.
Working - If we select all the email tests at once and run them it comes back with the desired result and the test works perfectly. We do this using the RCC client or Host Monitor client directly off the server. The tests only work using either client.
Not Working - If we wait for the 6pm schedule the tests start but the result is never received. It's like it doesn't read the email on the schedule. We know there are genuine emails in there as well.
Tested with POP and IMAP.
We are testing this on Windows Server 2012 64bit edition.
- UAC disabled
I have checked the HM logs and found it does actually run the tests.
Any thoughts?
Been testing this further,
We are find email test fails when using either "Irregular Schedule" and "Expression Schedule".
I have setup the email tests with a "regular schedule" as opposed to the above that fires off every 10min to test and it works 100% of the time.
With a regular schedule the maximum time you can allocate is 23hrs 59min 59 seconds. I will test this schedule out and report back my results.
The schedule I was running when it was failing the email test was a Irregular Schedule daily at 18:00:00.
We are find email test fails when using either "Irregular Schedule" and "Expression Schedule".
I have setup the email tests with a "regular schedule" as opposed to the above that fires off every 10min to test and it works 100% of the time.
With a regular schedule the maximum time you can allocate is 23hrs 59min 59 seconds. I will test this schedule out and report back my results.
The schedule I was running when it was failing the email test was a Irregular Schedule daily at 18:00:00.
RCC does not perform tests, it just shows results.Working - If we select all the email tests at once and run them it comes back with the desired result and the test works perfectly. We do this using the RCC client or Host Monitor client directly off the server. The tests only work using either client.
This does not matter, HostMonitor does not use Windows API for these tests (well, it uses Winsock to work with TCP)We are testing this on Windows Server 2012 64bit edition.
- UAC disabled
Of course, its not related to OS. If there are some problem, it can be related to mail server (or HostMonitor)In addition to the above we have tested this on a Windows 7, Windows 8 and Server 2012. All results are the same.
But we cannot say what is wrong unless we see HostMonitor<->MailServer communication.
Can you enable non-SSL connection (if disabled) and capture traffic when you think test works incorrectly?
Regards
Alex