next »

[scarymonkey]

Penny, to get IMAP you would need to add a new account and during that process it should ask you to choose the protocol (with POP3 being the default). I think it is the 3rd screen and the top line says something like 'My incoming mail server is a xxxxxx server' with xxxxxx being a drop down list. You need to change this to IMAP.

[Penny]

Penny, to get IMAP you would need to add a new account and during that process it should ask you to choose the protocol (with POP3 being the default). I think it is the 3rd screen and the top line says something like 'My incoming mail server is a xxxxxx server' with xxxxxx being a drop down list. You need to change this to IMAP.

Thanks Vince.  I removed the IMAP from OE (and got my mailboxes back) and James (my eldest) has installed Outlook which has double the server time and set up IMAP there, just for the happychild account.

Still times out    presumably because it isn't designed to download 60,000 messages at one go.  Realistically I feel I've done everything that is reasonably possible from this end;  given that I can't apparently use delmail to delete everything, I'm now dependent on F9 either re-queuing the mail and a default blackhole being set up for everything but the pokemon2006 and penny2006 addresses, or else F9 deleting the entire current content of the rollo... account because I can't do that from here.  Webmail won't let me in on the mail account (username/password not accepted) and the connection gets terminated by the server before OE can download anything.

The only other possible solution (which James suggested) would be if F9 can export the entire contents of the rollo... account into some type of file which could be downloaded (FTP?) in some sort of format which could be imported into OE or Outlook, so I can extract anything relevant before deleting the rest.  Either way, sorting this out has realistically to be done at the F9 end as I can't do anything further from here :/

Out of ideas, patience, and time.

Regards,

Penny.

[dhookham]

These might be worth trying:

http://eremover.bizhosting.com/index.htm

http://www.lbetoolbox.com/spamtool.htm

http://www.poptray.org/

[northbritish]

The only other possible solution (which James suggested) would be if F9 can export the entire contents of the rollo... account into some type of file which could be downloaded (FTP?) in some sort of format which could be imported into OE or Outlook, so I can extract anything relevant before deleting the rest.  Either way, sorting this out has realistically to be done at the F9 end as I can't do anything further from here :/

It might be possible either for some friendly CS or comms agent to send the mail in a file in one of the common mail folder formats across to you.  There are a variety of mail clients that can import from different mail folder types.  I know that the mail in my inbox with my external hosting company is held in one single file and by opening it in the likes of wordpad you can read the text of the e-mails (but not the attachments which are ascii encoded).

I'll try copying the file and importing it via various mail clients, just out of curiosity, to see how easy something like that might be.

[northbritish]

Ok, I tried copying the inbox file from my hosting webspace and then importing it and it worked.  Problem is I wasn't using Outlook or OE to import it so I'd need to check if they could also handle it, but they probably could.  Second problem is I don't know if Plusnet store the mail using the "mbox" format or one of the others.  But it seems it might be doable with a bit of effort.

[Colin]

PlusNet don't use mbox, they use Maildir I believe.

[dhookham]

Outlook (and I think OE) can import mbox format ok through the import wizard.
Neither can handle maildir natively (as of O2003, anyway... not had opportunity to test with 2007)

On the assumption that you get a maildir folder full of mail content sat on your pc...
Some options:
One-step conversion
Use something like aid4mail to convert (this is shareware and I'm not sure how much functionality you get without paying up)
Two-step conversion
Convert the maildir to mbox files (utilities are rife in linuxland, but not so sure about windowsworld) then import.
Multi-step conversion
Import into something like Thunderbird, then:

• Use a utility to convert from mbox to eml files (these will then drag and drop directly into Outlook or OE)
• Use a utility to import into a gmail account (if you have one) - this might also have the benefit of stripping out some of the spam into the gmail spam folder. Then you could download via pop3 from gmail.

[Penny]

On the assumption that you get a maildir folder full of mail content sat on your pc...

Many thanks to you, Colin and northbritish for the info on this one. A lot depends now on whether F9 is willing / able to export the file and thus clear down the mailbox so it will work again and I get the ongoing stuff.   I can't handle the website effectively without ongoing access to incoming mail and surely an ISP of PlusNet's calibre/longevity must already have measures in place they habitually use to sort out problems of this nature.

My mother is very ill in hospital (that's why I was away); I have a lot of practical stuff to catch up this end to ensure my kids have some sort of a normal Christmas; and I need to get up to speed with what's happening with the site so I can deal with the urgent items on the multi-language area particularly.

One way or another I need mail re-enabled asap so this is a request to F9 to sort this out in whatever way they can, please

Regards,

Penny.

[Graham W]

If Penny has 60,000 emails and assuming they average 1,000 bytes each then how is any system going to handle a 60,000,000 bytes (60MB)file containing them all?

[jelv1]

Penny,

If you've set up all the redirections for the prefixes you want you should at least be getting all new mail now.

[mikeb]

I know you say you've already tried it but I still think Mailwasher is the answer to the maidens prayer here !

What actually happened when you ran Mailwasher ?  I assume that it simply couldn't cope with huge number of messages and therefore fell over after DLing so many.  Hardly surprising with 60k to deal with I suppose.  But if it stopped without crashing completely after DLing a large number of message headers then it might have been possible to process those and run it again to check and process the next block. OK, not much fun if it only DLs 100 or so headers before falling over and you've got 60k to deal with but it could well have been something to do one cold dark night when you're *really* bored

However, there is one other thought I had during the day though.  Not totally certain if this really is possible or would work but I'm sure I've had to do something very similar in the dim and distant past.

I'm assuming that the domain name has been hijacked or has been attacked and most of the messages are either bounces or spam addressed to random_characters@your_domain.co.uk   There are, however, a small number of possibly genuine messages addressed to valid_name1@your_domain.co.uk or valid_name2@your_domain.co.uk or from one_particular_user@another_domain.co.uk or have a specific subject of "unusual_subject" etc.  If this is the case then I think you should be able to set up a collection of filters or white list entries or some combination of things to effectively ignore the possibly 'valid' messages but delete the rest. i.e.

delete = NOT ( [TO: = valid_name1 OR valid_name2 OR valid_name3] OR [FROM: = one_particular_user] OR [SUBJECT: = unusual_subject] )

I guess you've tried something like this already but Mailwasher fell over somewhere along the way after trying to display a huge numbers of messages tagged for deletion.  But did you try checking the "delete automatically" option ?  I think this should delete the message just about immediately i.e. whilst DLing message headers and therefore there isn't an ever growing list of messages being displayed and tagged for deletion.  The only messages that should in fact be displayed are the messages you might actually want to keep !  Hopefully Mailwasher will not complain at this and the worst I think would happen is that the PN mailserver will eventually object to such a lengthy session and dump the connection - but the next time you run Mailwasher, you should at least find way less messages lurking on the server and be able to check/process the next load !

NOTE that if I'm right, you will only get one shot at trawling through the mailbox contents of course so the filtering needs to be 100% guaranteed correct on the very first attempt so mucho care and all that needed

If you can explain exactly what the problem with Mailwasher was and what you were actually trying to do then I will give it some more serious thought and maybe even try a few things out on ye olde F9 account to see if I can get something that might be helpful to you

BTW, I posted a question on the Firetrust forum this morning (giving no specific details whatsoever but describing the problem in general terms) and asking for some info on Mailwasher regarding max number of messages and also for any advice/comments/suggestions but nothing forthcoming so far

[Penny]

I know you say you've already tried it but I still think Mailwasher is the answer to the maidens prayer here !

What actually happened when you ran Mailwasher ?  I assume that it simply couldn't cope with huge number of messages and therefore fell over after DLing so many.  Hardly surprising with 60k to deal with I suppose.

Hi Mike, thanks for your help with this. Original Mailwasher message was "The operation timed out - no response was received from the server."

Have just tried setting up the filters (didn't know about those before!), as follows:
Filter name: mail not to me
Action: hide the email
Delete the email
Automatically (without notification)

Filters - apply this filter when (ticked) all of the rules below are satisfied
The 'to' field - does not contain - penny2006 (@ etc.)
The 'to' field - does not contain - pokemon2006 (@ etc.)

which gives me:

If the To field does not contain"penny2006@(etc)" and not "pokemon2006@(etc.)" then hide the message from the messages list , and and automatically (without warning or notification) delete the message.

Tried checking mail again - and got "The operation timed out - no response was received from the server."  Any way of extending the time? Looked to be only 60 seconds before it gave up.

Just for background info, Webmail won't let me in to the main account (username/password apparently inaccurate); OE on 5 minutes gets the connection zapped by the server, Outlook/IMAP on 10 minutes gets the connection zapped by the server (usually OE at least would ask if I require more time to start the downloading).  So I'm assuming there must be problems at the F9 end as well somehow :/

Gotta go, sorry, but will be back when I can.

Regards,

Penny.

[mikeb]

Mailwasher should display messages as it DLs the headers and DLs are usually very slow from PN servers (often less than 1 message per second) but the point is that you should be seeing the messages being listed in the Mailwasher window even if Mailwasher might ultimately throw a wobbly when it gets far too many of them.  The status line should show connection status (connecting to mail.plus.net, logging in to server etc.) and this will then be followed by how many messages have currently been DLd out of the maximum number available on the server once a connection has been established.  Unless you see "your_account_name: downloading ?? of #####" on the status line then no connection is being established.

A 'timeout' is much more likely due to getting no response from the mailserver at all which probably means that you have a problem with either the mail A/C setup or that Mailwasher is being denied internet access for some reason.  However, if you are actually seeing "downloading ?? of #####" on the status line what are the numbers when the error message comes up ?

EDIT: Just re-read your post above, the PN mailserver is playing silly b*ggers by the sound of it !  although they all appear to be working for me at the mo. 

I also strongly suggest that you DO NOT check the 'delete automatically' or 'hide' boxes until you can actually see message headers being displayed as they are DL'd so you can check it appears to be doing what you want.  You might find that Mailwasher doesn't actually crash if the list gets way too long once you actually get it to connect to the mailserver and DLing message headers

PS: 60k messages at around 1 message per second is going to take an unbelievably long time of course

[mikeb]

Hmmmmm, I have a sneaky suspicion from memory that a filter like:

If the To field does not contain"penny2006@(etc)" and not "pokemon2006@(etc.)" then hide the message from the messages list , and and automatically (without warning or notification) delete the message.

ends up deleting everything that isn't the first name

I would define several separate and simple filters (at least initially) rather than using a single "NOT name1 AND NOT name2" filter just to be absolutely certain that it is doing what you want it to do.

Filter1: If the TO field contains "valid_name1@your_domain.co.uk" then mail is legitimate.

Filter2: If the TO field contains "valid_name2@your_domain.co.uk" then mail is legitimate.

Filter3: If the FROM field contains "particular_person@their_domain.co.uk" then mail is legitimate.

Filter4: If the SUBJECT field contains "relevant_unusual_subject" then mail is legitimate.

Note that in each case you will need to click the "fewer rules" button when setting each of these up to remove the second test that appears in the filter setup by default.  The filters are evaluated in order starting from the top of the list.  You can add just about as many as you like (and change the order) so as to check and tag as many specific messages that you can think of that might possibly be genuine. 

After that, all you need is a filter to delete the rest - the equivalent of "delete everything" because anything of any possible importance has already been tagged as legitimate.  This could possibly be:

Filter5: If the ENTIRE HEADER contains "your_domain.co.uk" then mark the message for deletion.

but it depends on how the spam mail is addressed as to what would be the best option. But as I said above, it is really important NOT to check the "delete automatically" or "hide" boxes until you are reasonably certain the filters are doing what you want.  Once you can get messages being listed and tagged in the Mailwasher window you will be able to see what is going on.  Don't forget that generally speaking you only have one chance at getting it right, once you delete a message it's gone !!

I'm not sure what happens in the free trial version, but the PRO version has a "trash can" so you can restore accidental deletions but even if the free version has this it is probably best disabled due to the number of messages involved.  Also, there are obviously much better ways of doing the filtering than what I suggest above but keeping it very simple is definitely a good thing unless you're good at it ! The penalty of having a stack of simple 1 line filters rather than a single complicated one is not large and it is quite possibly more efficient in processing time than a complex 'regular expression' filter would be in any case.

The key things are keep it simple and try it out manually before leaving Mailwasher to get on with deleting stuff over the next 16 hours or so !  I'm going to go and send a few "legitimate" looking messages to ye olde spammed-to-death F9 address and then check that the filter set above appears to do what I would expect

PS: How sad am I to be sitting here thinking about problems and typing all this on a Saturday night when I could be down the pub 

[mikeb]

Yup, the above suggestion will work very nicely indeed providing that Mailwasher doesn't fall over when faced with checking and processing 60k messages ! ... and always assuming that the PN mailserver is playing the game as well of course

So create as many "legitimate mail" filters as you can possibly think of to retain anything that might potentially be of importance.  Then define a single "mark everything for deletion" filter and make sure it is at the bottom of the list. 

Try this out and see what happens.  If it all looks good then stop Mailwasher and change the "delete" filter options from "mark for deletion" to "delete automatically" then set Mailwasher going again and (hopefully) come back around this time tomorrow to see a list of all the "legitimate mail" headers and virtually no spam  

However, if it doesn't quite work out like that and Mailwasher falls over or something then post the details and I'll think again. 

Right then, I reckon that makes it o'clock    Have fun !