Email auto emails are not working

which web host ? vultr and some vps web hosts block smtp until you contact them to enable it and provide verification ID documentation.

Troubleshooting Proper Email Sending

To troubleshoot and/or ensure server sent emails via Postfix and from @domain.com your domains are delivered to their destination, do the following:

Ensure Proper DNS Records Setup

Ensure you have setup proper SPF, DKIM, DMARC & PTR DNS records for your main hostname i.e. hostname.domain.com and all @domain.com domain names as per outlined and linked instructions at here and Getting Started Guide Step 1 for main hostname (i.e. hostname.domain.com). The addons/opendkim.sh addon in 123.09beta01 will help you setup SPF/DKIM for main hostname of your Centmin Mod server. Without these DNS records for your main hostname and all domain names, the likelihood of your server sent and @domain.com sent emails delivering to target inboxes is lessened and may end up in user's spam box or being rejected.

You can use these online DNS toolboxes to verify you have properly setup SPF, DKIM, DMARC and PTR DNS records

• Network Tools From MxToolBox
• Global DNS Propagation Checker - What's My DNS?

Testing Server Sent Emails

Use Newsletters spam test by mail-tester.com to send a test email from your server to the email address listed on the mail-tester.com web site - DO NOT leave the site yet though.

To Test Server Sent Email

For example if the site lists email [email protected], in SSH you use mail command line to sent a test email with subject "mail-tester" and email contents of "mail-test"

Code (Text):

echo "mail-test" | mail -s "mail-tester" [email protected]

To Test PHP mail() Sent Email

To test PHP mail() function sent email, create a test-mail.php file (can be any name you want) with contents - changing the [email protected] to whatever you see on mail-tester.com web site

PHP:

<?php
    ini_set('display_errors', 1);
    error_reporting(-1);
    mail ('[email protected]', 'Postfix Test', 'A test email') || print_r(error_get_last());
?>


save test-mail.php to /home/nginx/domains/domain.com/public/ web root directory and then open up domain.com/test-mail.php on your server. Remember to delete test-mail.php afterwards.

Then click the 'then check your score' button on mail-tester.com site. It will check the email you sent and all it's email headers and give you a report card for the sending domain which is usually your main hostname in default Centmin Mod setups i.e. if sending email is [email protected], then sending domain is hostname.domain.com. You can ignore for subdomains the warning of no MX records for subdomain/hostnames as subdomain/hostnames don't require MX records only the @domain.com domain for receiving emails. This main hostname domain hostname.domain.com would be important for emails sent from your Centmin Mod server so need the required SPF, DKIM, DMARC and PTR DNS records mentioned above.

This checks php mail() from server sent From = [email protected] where host.domain.com is your main hostname. To test php mail() with a proper From = [email protected] which maybe set in your PHP web app like Xenforo, Wordpress etc. Use a slight variation of the test-mail.php php file below - changing the [email protected] to whatever you see on mail-tester.com web site and changing [email protected] email address to the one you set in your PHP web app like Xenforo, Wordpress etc:

PHP:

<?php
    ini_set('display_errors', 1);
    error_reporting(-1);
   $headers = "From: [email protected]";
    mail ('[email protected]', 'Postfix Test', 'A test email',$headers) || print_r(error_get_last());
?>

then open up domain.com/test-mail.php on your server. Then click the 'then check your score' button on mail-tester.com site

You can also test your @domain.com emails via SSH by adding the From email -r

Code (Text):

echo "mail-test" | mail -s "mail-tester" -r [email protected] [email protected]

Then checking your Gmail account including spam box for the email and looking at 'Show Original' for full headers.

You can also test other target emails i.e. your @gmail.com account via SSH command

Code (Text):

echo "mail-test" | mail -s "mail-tester" [email protected]

Then checking your Gmail account including spam box for the email and looking at 'Show Original' for full headers.

Example of Gmail received email's 'Show Original' headers where my centminmod.com domain has working SPF, DKIM and DMARC DNS records setup from my 3rd party Google App/Gsuite email provider service. This is from email sent from my server where from email field was @centminmod.com.

• My centminmod.com SPF record. For main hostname, use the SPF tools and generators linked to here to create your SPF record or use addons/opendkim.sh to generator both DKIM + SPF records. For @domain.com your 3rd party email provider would provide those for you i.e. Google Gsuite/Google App, Zoho, Outlook/Microsoft etc.
• My centminmod.com DKIM record you need to specify the selector, so if you setup DKIM record as google._domainkey.centminmod.com, then the selector is google and for mxtoolbox.com DKIM check you'd enter it in format of domain:selector i.e. centminmod.com:google. For main hostname, Centmin Mod users can use addons/opendkim.sh to generate both the DKIM + SPF records. For @domain.com your 3rd party email provider would provide those for you i.e. Google Gsuite/Google App, Zoho, Outlook/Microsoft etc.
• My centminmod.com DMARC record which is just a TXT DNS record so can be looked up as a TXT record as well. You can create DMARC records via free service at https://dmarc.postmarkapp.com/ but DMARC only works when you have both valid working SPF and DKIM DNS records. On the free service site, on the 'Send reports about this domain' field enter your domain.com or subdomain.domain.com (i.e. main hostname host.domain.com) in the field

Notes For Web App Sent Emails

Now if you use a web app like Wordpress, Xenforo, IP.Board, Magento, etc to sent emails. Then emails can either be sent as is via Centmin Mod Postfix MTA server via [email protected] where receiving email servers would evaluate the SPF, DKIM, DMARC and PTR DNS records for sending domain @host.domain.com. If server's main hostname i.e. host.domain.com has valid DNS records, then email will be less likely sent to spam box or being rejected by receiving email server.

If however, your web app allows you to set a from email field and you sent emails from say [email protected], then receiving email servers would evaluate the SPF, DKIM, DMARC and PTR DNS records for sending domain @domain.com so your domain.com would need to have those DNS records setup. The above Gmail 'Show Original' email headers screenshot above is an example of such cases.

Using above mail-tester.com online tool is easiest way to check if all those SPF, DKIM, DMARC and PTR DNS records for sending domain @host.domain.com and @domain.com are setup correctly.

Main Host Name Setup

There is a reason the official Centmin Mod Getting Started Guide Step 1 outlines a proper main hostname SPF, DKIM, DMARC and PTR DNS records setup, as it is used for many purposes such as statistics hosting on main hostname vhost, phpmyadmin.sh installer setup of phpmyadmin on main hostname but also for ensuring proper email delivery from main hostname for emails sent from the server.

As such your main hostname for your Centmin Mod server needs to be unique. The main hostname has a separate Nginx vhost config file at /usr/local/nginx/conf/conf.d/virtual.conf where server_name defined there is auto populated to the server main hostname.

You can check if the main hostname is uniquely setup via this grep command in SSH type

Code (Text):

grep -rw server_name /usr/local/nginx/conf/conf.d/ | grep -w "$(hostname)"

Ensure only 1 entry match is found and that is usually the one contained in main hostname's Nginx vhost config file at /usr/local/nginx/conf/conf.d/virtual.conf

example output of 1 entry match you should expect as host.domain.com should only be referenced once in server_name for main hostname's Nginx vhost config file at /usr/local/nginx/conf/conf.d/virtual.conf

Code (Text):

grep -rw server_name /usr/local/nginx/conf/conf.d/ | grep -w "$(hostname)"
/usr/local/nginx/conf/conf.d/virtual.conf:            server_name host.domain.com;

If they don't match or if more than one Nginx vhost file is returned from the grep search, then you need to change and update DNS for the main hostname as per Centmin Mod Getting Started Guide Step 1 and then edit the server_name listed in /usr/local/nginx/conf/conf.d/virtual.conf to the newly changed main hostname.

The main hostname domain i.e. host.domain.com is the domain that server sent emails via Postfix MTA is sent from, so needs to properly setup on server and with proper DNS records.

Postfix pflogsumm Stats

Centmin Mod by default installs pflogsumm tool for Postfix log statistics. Centmin Mod only provides the tool for your usage, interpretation and understanding of the output is left up to you to figure out.

There's a default alias command you can type for today only stats, postfixlog

The alias for postfixlog command is

Code (Text):

alias postfixlog='pflogsumm -d today --verbose_msg_detail /var/log/maillog'

which is basically same as calling pflogsumm directly as

Code (Text):

pflogsumm -d today --verbose_msg_detail /var/log/maillog

There's also other commands you can directly use to by invoking pflogsumm command.

To see yesterday's stats instead of today

Code (Text):

pflogsumm -d yesterday --verbose_msg_detail /var/log/maillog

Report for all /var/log/maillog* in sorted time ascending order

Code (Text):

pflogsumm $(ls -rt /var/log/maillog*)

To filter on specific date of the month, i.e. Mar 26

Code (Text):

grep 'Mar 26' /var/log/maillog | pflogsumm --verbose_msg_detail

Spoiler: Click to show pflogsumm example output report

Code (Text):

grep 'Mar 26' /var/log/maillog | pflogsumm --verbose_msg_detail

Grand Totals
------------
messages

     23   received
     24   delivered
      0   forwarded
      0   deferred
      0   bounced
      0   rejected (0%)
      0   reject warnings
      0   held
      0   discarded (0%)

  24609   bytes received
  27282   bytes delivered
      3   senders
      2   sending hosts/domains
      5   recipients
      3   recipient hosts/domains


Per-Hour Traffic Summary
------------------------
    time          received  delivered   deferred    bounced     rejected
    --------------------------------------------------------------------
    0000-0100           0          0          0          0          0
    0100-0200           0          0          0          0          0
    0200-0300           0          0          0          0          0
    0300-0400           0          0          0          0          0
    0400-0500           3          3          0          0          0
    0500-0600           2          2          0          0          0
    0600-0700           2          2          0          0          0
    0700-0800           2          2          0          0          0
    0800-0900          10         11          0          0          0
    0900-1000           3          3          0          0          0
    1000-1100           1          1          0          0          0
    1100-1200           0          0          0          0          0
    1200-1300           0          0          0          0          0
    1300-1400           0          0          0          0          0
    1400-1500           0          0          0          0          0
    1500-1600           0          0          0          0          0
    1600-1700           0          0          0          0          0
    1700-1800           0          0          0          0          0
    1800-1900           0          0          0          0          0
    1900-2000           0          0          0          0          0
    2000-2100           0          0          0          0          0
    2100-2200           0          0          0          0          0
    2200-2300           0          0          0          0          0
    2300-2400           0          0          0          0          0

Host/Domain Summary: Message Delivery
--------------------------------------
 sent cnt  bytes   defers   avg dly max dly host/domain
 -------- -------  -------  ------- ------- -----------
     16    21656        0     0.1 s    0.1 s  host.domain.com
      6     4891        0     0.9 s    1.1 s  domain.com
      2      735        0     2.0 s    2.1 s  mail-tester.com

Host/Domain Summary: Messages Received
---------------------------------------
 msg cnt   bytes   host/domain
 -------- -------  -----------
     21    21726   host.domain.com
      2     2883   domain.com

Senders by message count
------------------------
     19   [email protected]
      2   [email protected]
      2   [email protected]

Recipients by message count
---------------------------
     16   [email protected]
      3   [email protected]
      2   [email protected]
      2   [email protected]
      1   [email protected]

Senders by message size
-----------------------
  20991   [email protected]
   2883   [email protected]
    735   [email protected]

Recipients by message size
--------------------------
  21656   [email protected]
   2883   [email protected]
   1512   [email protected]
    735   [email protected]
    496   [email protected]

message deferral detail: none

message bounce detail (by relay): none

message reject detail: none

message reject warning detail: none

message hold detail: none

message discard detail: none

smtp delivery failures: none

Warnings: none

Fatal Errors: none

Panics: none

Master daemon messages: none

 

yes whereever your domain's DNS records are managed/hosted.

 

no do not remove ZOHO DNS records, those ZOHO should have their own DKIM, SPF records you should of setup. But you need to add additional ones for your server's main hostname as outlined at Email - Steps to ensure your site/server email doesn't end up in spam inboxes

as per above

The 2nd set evaluated from @domain.com will be the DKIM/SPF records ZOHO provided you to setup i.e. Email - Zoho Mail Free @yourdomain.com Email Provider Setup Information

 

subdomains do not need MX records only non-subdomain i.e. domain.com so can ignore that

sounds like you do not have proper SPF text record and Dkim setup for server1.mydomain.com as per Email - Steps to ensure your site/server email doesn't end up in spam inboxes you can use addons/opendkim.sh addon script which when ran will give your the DKIM and SPF txt records to add for your server1.mydomain.com (which should match your server's main hostname)

 

that is a subdomain anything.domain.com is a subdomain, only domain.com is non-subdomain

 

no do not delete you have 2 sets of SPF/DKIM

1. for @domain.com provided by google apps
2. for @server1.domain.com provided by addons/opendkim.sh script

as per Email - Steps to ensure your site/server email doesn't end up in spam inboxes

 

Yeah ensure you have followed all steps, blacklist checks etc outlined at Email - Steps to ensure your site/server email doesn't end up in spam inboxes

 

server1.mydomain.com needs DNS A record = forward entry as per getting started guide step 1 instructions

 

PTR is for your local server email sending domains so you should have for server1.domain.com for emails sent from @server1.domain.com

google apps already has their own PTR for emails sent from @domain.com