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Old 5 Jan 2015, 11:33 PM   #1
yositimy
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Account Locked Without Warning, can't be cleared without webmail

The other day a family member account was locked without warning due to being over the storage quota (so the server said). She was trying to send a 25MB message that got bounced and then reduced the size to 5MB... but I don't think she was near her quota (she usually sits at ~50% of 1GB). Seems like the email warnings to the family account administrator have been removed and replaced with some kind of push notification that many mail clients don't recognize.... or perhaps the server had a glitch.

Anyway we could not clear the account lock until we used webmail to clear its popup notice box. Webmail status said we were less than 80% but the account was still locked. Anyone else notice this, or is it just me? The family member never uses webmail, typically reads mail on her iPhone or iPad.

I submitted a support ticket but so far only received one of those "shrugged shoulder" must be the clent responses.

I tried searching the forum but didn't turn up anything relevant, although there have been a few reports of accounts being locked but not near the quota size.

Last edited by yositimy : 6 Jan 2015 at 01:57 AM.
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Old 6 Jan 2015, 03:12 AM   #2
n5bb
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What was the exact error message produced by the client?

I don't understand your push notification comment. Are you are using an IMAP client? What email client was being used?

Bill
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Old 6 Jan 2015, 03:16 AM   #3
gj15
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I’d have a look around to see if you’ve got any lingering copies of the message. As well as the bounced copy back in your Inbox you may well have a copy sitting in the Sent folder. Check the Drafts folder too for if the Apple Mail desktop client was used anytime in the composition, this has a habit of autosaving a draft but never properly clearing it even once a subsequent transaction has completed. Finally check the Trash / Deleted Items folder and delete it from there permanently. Until it has all gone from there, it is still using quota.

You may not readily see the messages in the folders on an idevice as it would need to re-download them which it would probably only attempt to do once you go to view the folder. If you navigate away before the download completes you may never see the message(s) on the device. For this reason, I would recommend doing the tidy-up from the webmail interface.

One final point: if you’re not aware, a raw attachment size of 25MB will bulk up through the attachment encoding. As a rule of thumb I add 50% (which is an overestimate but suits my needs) so you may have a few multiples of 37MB of quota used.
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Old 6 Jan 2015, 03:37 AM   #4
n5bb
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Arrow Destination service or email client may not support large attachments

Remember that there are several other account limits in addition to the quota. See:
Account limits

There are also limits for email clients. Outlook 2013 has a limit of 20 MB.

My guess is that the problem was due to attempting to send a large message to Gmail or another email service which has a limit smaller than 25 MB. I think that Gmail limit is 25 MB for the complete encoded message, text, and headers. That means that an email with an attached file exceeding roughly 17 MB (original file size) may get rejected by the Gmail incoming server. You need to multiply the attachment total file size by roughly 1.4 to get the transmitted message length.

Bill
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Old 6 Jan 2015, 04:31 AM   #5
BritTim
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How did you discover that the account was locked? Was it a rejection message in a reply when trying to send an email through the mail client? Do you still have that message? As Bill asked, which email client are you using, and are you using IMAP? If so, are you saving to the Sent folder on the server by using the mail client, or using the better method of saving by Personality options?

I would check the Login Log, just to make sure there are no unexpected accesses to the account.(Advanced->Login Log top of third column)
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Old 6 Jan 2015, 06:27 AM   #6
yositimy
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I understand the nature of sending large emails to disadvantaged users. I have been using Fastmail for 12+ years.

Just to clarrify for those interested:

We are using IMAP. Its a family account and the account in question was one of the family members. The clients involved are the latest iOS iPhone mail app and Mavericks Mac OS app. She has a 1GB storage quota and started the day with about 500MB used.

After sending the 25MB message, The recipients server responded that the message was just a little too large for delivery to the recipient (a business). We reduced the size of the attachment to 5MB and resent.

Hours later she noticed she had not been receiving emails since the 5MB message was sent in the morning (that message was sent and delivered).

I suspected she may have busted some storage quota so I told her to clean up her mail box. The iPhone client returned the error that it could not move the message to the trash, however... any message selected. We reset the iPhone, she checked the trash folder and it indicated empty (there are actually a few messages there). She googled the iPhone "move to trash error" and found a few others with a similar issue, but it turned out to not be this case (folks were resetting the IMAP inbox to fix).

She opened mail on her Mac (mavericks) and observed no received emails (she runs a small business and there is always emails). She tried deleting a small message and it was moved to the trash but the trash folder(s) remained empty. There were no warnings in her inbox or notification pane. Still no emails.... so time to try webmail...

She never uses webmail, and after we reset her password (from the family admin account) she logged into webmail. The storage status on the left indicate 81% full and there was an alert box at the bottom of the page indicating the account was at 101% full and messages were being rejected. Within a minute or so the storage % reported on the bottom left went to 50%. There was still no change at the clients (we click on get new mail). I didn't want to touch anything on webmail yet, just see what was going on. A few minutes later we manually closed the alert window and immediately things at the clients went back to normal.

There were no notifications, to either the user or family account administrator. Fastmail support says notifications are sent but some clients don't process them, hence I perhaps erroneously described it as a push type notification.

The account was not "unlocked" until the webmail notification was recognized (coincidence, dunno seems unlikely). Did I mention she never uses webmail, just doesn't like it.

Personally I find it hard to believe she exceeded 1GB, but perhaps it happened. I have been known to be mistaken now and again. I see no other quota busting indications anywhere. Neither the user or account admin received any emails about quota usage, even when the account was locked.

The login log does not have any unexpected activity.

On webmail there is a trash folder and deleted message folder. I think the email client trash folder corresponds to the webmail deleted message folder.


So from our point of view, the account was locked/blocked for some reason, no notifications were delivered to the user or admin email clients, the account was not unlocked/unblocked until the user logged into webmail and cleared the popup note. ..user perceptions can be wrong.. I think most of the behavior can be attributed to what happens when the account is blocked, and just noted here for completeness. My concern is more about the lack of notifications and the fact the logjam didn't break loose until webmail was logged into. She runs her business just fine from her iPhone client, dunno how she does it but she does it well.

Perhaps I just have unrealistic expectations...

Last edited by yositimy : 6 Jan 2015 at 08:10 AM.
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Old 6 Jan 2015, 10:08 AM   #7
BritTim
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OK, I think I understand what caused this.

It is important with IMAP to understand that deleted messages are still there until purged. I think you had a lot of deleted messages (probably in the Inbox) that were automatically purged when you logged in to the web interface.

I had issues with the standard IOS mail client using IMAP with Fastmail in the past. It seems a bit buggy, and I would use an alternative if feasible. I understand this my be difficult if she is used to her current client.

I agree notifications to admin would be appropriate.
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Old 6 Jan 2015, 12:01 PM   #8
yositimy
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I understand the delete and purge concepts.

She was trying to manually purge messages as well as delete them, but could not get past the error and could not see the messages in the deleted items folder to purge them... probably because the account was locked/blocked. She has the client set to purge mails after a week, last I checked a couple weeks ago there may have been 20-30 emails in there. The OSX mail on her Mac may handle it better, but there was still no way to manually purge.

I was complaining more about the system refusing to unblock the account until someone logged into webmail AND acknowledged the notification box... as well as the lack of notifications. In the past, maybe a year or two ago, I recall getting warning emails when my account exceeded one quota or another and I think I could reduce the mailbox size by deleting/purging from the client.

She loves the iPhone email client because it integrates so well with the rest of the iOS and Mac ecosystem. It serves her well, better for her than any other I've tried on a phone. They all seem to have one quirk or another, the fastmail app seem like a decent try, but lacks many of the feel and touch features she uses.

Oh well

Last edited by yositimy : 6 Jan 2015 at 12:27 PM.
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Old 6 Jan 2015, 12:18 PM   #9
BritTim
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You probably know this. The account was not exactly locked. It was just full. The pop-up message you received at login was telling you that, but immediately fixing it by purging deleted messages.

The exact reason why the purge by the external mail client was failing is unclear, but may be because the client was not using Cyrus IMAP correctly. I guess it might have been a bug in Cyrus IMAP, but that is less likely, as the web client was able to complete the purge without difficulty.

This would not have been a major problem, I think, if you (as admin) had been receiving warnings that the account was nearly full.
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Old 6 Jan 2015, 01:26 PM   #10
ameliyacain
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Thank you so much for this wonderful post. I loved to read it.
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Old 6 Jan 2015, 01:50 PM   #11
BritTim
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Quote:
Originally Posted by ameliyacain View Post
Thank you so much for this wonderful post. I loved to read it.
Thank you, and welcome to the forums!
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Old 6 Jan 2015, 02:00 PM   #12
yositimy
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It seemed to me that the server was not talking to the clients until I acknowledged the webmail notification box, or whatever it was called. It seemed that the notification was holding up the server-client dialog if you know what I mean. Perhaps a coincidence... I dunno, don't have a wire shark capture. Just seemed strange... perhaps we got caught up in a bit of a race condition.. but web mail was open for maybe 5 minutes before I closed the warning box and the server seemed to immediately started talking to the clients again.

And yes a warning email would have been nice, could have saved us a bunch of time (and 8 hours of bounced emails), especially one that included directions to use webmail to reduce the mailbox size ... but that could just be us and our mindset.

Not sure what has changed over the past year or two, but I do recall email warnings working over a year ago and that the Mac OS client was able to dump messages without issue. I don't think Apple has changed MacMail in a decade

Last edited by yositimy : 6 Jan 2015 at 02:13 PM.
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Old 6 Jan 2015, 02:21 PM   #13
BritTim
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On why the external mail client could not get anything done, I am speculating, but here is a possible scenario.

The client had a bunch of outstanding actions. Examples might be copying outgoing emails to the Sent folder, deletes and purges. A correct design would have the client do purges first, then deletes, then uploading stuff to the server. What may have happened is that the client was deferring the purges and trying to do stuff in the order originally requested. This is easier to program, but will create problems when there is no space available to carry out the current action. It is a design error if the user cannot purge and delete messages when the mailbox is full.
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Old 6 Jan 2015, 02:44 PM   #14
yositimy
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Perhaps, but in this case I'm not sure if the iOS client had anything in its queue, when she tried to delete a message, it only returned an error indicating the message can't be deleted as if the server was rejecting the delete request (or move or whatever). So the client never got to the point of purging, nothing was showing up in the trash/deleted message folder to purge and the typical download indication was missing (so it appeared nothing was in route). There weren't any other errors shown.

It seemed more like a server glitch to me, but I'm sure there are pathologies that would produce these results... . She could easily read messages that were in her inbox and downloaded previously, so the client didn't seem to be busy....
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Old 6 Jan 2015, 03:17 PM   #15
BritTim
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The server is Cyrus IMAP. When you use the web interface, the same server is being accessed (using IMAP) as when using IMAP on an external mail client. Of course, every client is different in the details of how it operates. The Fastmail web interface knows it is using Cyrus IMAP specifically. It has an easier task than the IOS mail client which must be compatible with various IMAP servers, including some oddball ones like Gmail's Bugs are not surprising.

The scenario I posited in my previous post may be wide of the mark, but it is plausible. It is feasible that there will be actions (originally initiated offline) queued up. Every time you process an action on the client, it will process it immediately, remember it for later or reject the local change (client specific). Will it prioritize purge operations to avoid a hung condition? I do not know the answer.

Last edited by BritTim : 6 Jan 2015 at 03:30 PM. Reason: Reworded to be more inclusive technically
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