[NTLUG:Discuss] OT general email server question

[Rick Renshaw]

----- Original Message ----

From: Fred James <fredjame at fredjame.cnc.net>
To: NTLUG Discussion List <discuss at ntlug.org>
Sent: Wed, April 21, 2010 5:28:48 PM
Subject: Re: [NTLUG:Discuss] OT general email server question

Preston Hagar wrote:
> On Wed, Apr 21, 2010 at 4:00 PM, Fred James <fredjame at fredjame.cnc.net> wrote:
>  
>> All
>> For a large portion of today my ISP's email service was nonfunctional - not
>> sending/receiving
>> The error message, after asking for the password, was that the "server
>> responded: authorization failed."
>> Is it correct to assume that the message was generated by my ISP's
>> equipment, or could it be a generic message from my email client?
>> Thank you
>> Regards
>> Fred James
>> 
>> Additional detail:
>>   I have two email services ... my local ISP (A) and another ISP (B) ...
>>      A is set on my email client as the outgoing service
>>      A and B are each set as their own incoming service (of course)
>>   During the outage ...
>>      A could not send or receive
>>      B could both send and receive - even though it uses A to send
>> 
>> 
>> _______________________________________________
>> http://www.ntlug.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss
>> 
>>    
> 
> My guess would be it is the ISP's issue, but it is hard to say.  A
> good thing to try when you are having these outages is to test ...
(omissions for brevity)

Preston Hagar
Thank you for your thoughts and suggestions, however ...

There was never a question as to the cause of the outage being ISP 'A' as ...
   (1) everything worked except their email
   (2) the error message was about authentication
   (3) a call to the help number got a recorded message that there was an email outage, the engineers were working on it, and they even gave an estimated time of completion.

My first question remains ... were does the error message originate (the text of the message in particular)?
Thanks
Regards
Fred James




The 'authorization failed' probably came from the ISP mail server, and your email client wrapped it in the 'server responded: ' part.