Mail checking issues — Fixed
Posted (February 20th, 2007 at 1:53 pm PST) by andreaConnection to one of our file storage servers is causing inability to check mail for some of our customer (only one group of servers -cluster- is affected). Example: ERROR: Connection dropped by IMAP server in webmail. We’re working on resolving the problem, and we apologize for the inconvenience.
Please check back for updates.
Update at 1:00pm Pacific - mail is fixed.
92 Responses to “Mail checking issues — Fixed”
Thanks for the notice! IMAP seems to work just fine for me. I’ll lay off the webmail until fixed.
Please fix this ASAP. I recommended a client switch to you because they hated GoDaddy’s mail server problems and now this happens in the first month after I moved them. Perhaps put some redundancy in place so this won’t happen again. I really want them to be happy with Dreamhost and so far it looks like that could be tough.
Thank you.
its fixed :p
yea.. that’s weird. our email was broken for the past 6-7 hours and started working right about when they posted this.
I have been a client for about 6 weeks now and I think I have had mail outgaes atleast 1 time per week since I moved to Dreamhost. Usually they are only for 10-40 minutes, but this has been all day. I understand that from time to time you may have problems and it is not possible to be up 100% of the time, but this has been an ongoing issue ever since I moved my hosting to you. Please resolve this and put some measures in place to keep the uptime more consistent.
Everything else about your hosting is wonderful so hopefully this one issue can be taken care of for the future.
It is up and working now but it took 6 hours to post a message on the status page about the issue. It would be a big help if the status page reflected the problem on a more timely basis.
It is 1:10 pm in Califiornia, and this is NOT yet fixed for us! Please keep working on it!
Still broken here. It also was broken (and reported) 7 hours before this blog entry was posted. You’re usually better than this at updating us about what’s happening 
Like Ryan said, I’ve had daily outages since I signed up with Dreamhost a few weeks ago. I’ve reported the problem, but to no avail. Now my email has been down all day. I really hope both today’s problem and the daily outage problem can be resolved. I’m about ready to switch back to my old ISP, with which, in over six years, I never once had trouble getting to my email…
Oh Boy,
Much like Lyndon, I reccommended you to a client who was having sporadic e-mail issues with thier previous web host. Here we are barely a month in and the e-mail is down. This is a mission critical issue since this is a Hi-Tech PR firm who need to maintain contact. Not only that but when the principle tried to find out how to contact you the e-mail they sent bounced. They were also not pleased that there was no phone number to call to find out what was happening.
You need to improve the communication of outages for your clients, as well as improve the uptime of your servers since that is why we moved.
boys, 6 hours of downtime is a no-no. please be reliable, can’t really recommend you to anyone like that. currently i am using u for webhosting and evaluating the mail but so far not very well
Working for me now also!
Aye, I can cope with a few minutes downtime each day, but today was ridiculous. As others have said, you knew about the problem for over 6 hours before posting the critical announcement and then it was suddenly fixed within 10 minutes.
However, to those of you who need mission-critical e-mail access, I think you need to pay more for your hosting than what Dreamhost charge; they don’t claim to have anything like 100% uptime, so if you need that, go shell out $2000 per month elsewhere. I’m happy with $8 per month, myself.
(Incidentally, I wonder whether this was tied to the fact my server had a load of > 350 during the outage. I suspect so, since load is now down to 5 and mail is working again)
I’ve been a customer for years and never had problems so I switched my company to Dreamhost first thing after they hired me. Since then (december) we’ve been plagued with E-mail/IMAP problems - and patience is beginning to wear thin. I generally love Dreamhost - but I wish they would fix this!
I talked my boss into switching our company to this host and my butt was on the line today. We actually started having problems yesterday and they never got back to me.
Kenny really has hit the nail on the head: This was a bad day, and it’s clearly irritating to have outages like this. But the reality of shared hosting is that you’re at the mercy of thousands (maybe tens of thousands) of other people’s gremlin-inducing mischief.
In an environment like that, stuff *is* going to happen that negatively impacts your experience as a user/customer. The positive impact that you have all the rest of the time? It’s the ridiculously low price you pay for hosting.
For folks with personal web sites, personal email or microbusinesses, shared-hosting providers are a dream (no pun intended). But scroll back through the threads on this board, and you’ll consistently read about people recommending to clients that Dreamhost serve as a primary email solution. You’ll also see companies using Dreamhost as their mail solution in an environment with lots of employees (and lots of lost revenue if the email system goes down) on the line.
I’m not a Dreamhost fanboy, but I *am* a fan of proper risk analysis. And if having your mail down for, say, a few days a year in total downtime is going to cost you real money, then you need to be in a dedicated-hosting environment with back up MXs in place.
ive had this problem for around six hours, all web dav functions were affected too. this is really unacceptable. very difficult for me to recommend anyone to switch to DH after this. since i switched after new years eve there have been outages many times. normally shorter ones, but this is really not what i expect.
I realize it’s tough to get good info when signing up for a host but shazaam people! There has been plenty of warning in the forums about Dreamhost’s mail reliability problems. Many people have seen the behavior you talk about(regular outages, once a month, etc..) for the past two years! Inevitably, not everyone was affected and the typical apologists dilute the message.
That message being this: DO NOT rely on DH mail if you can help it. If you’re too poor, then there are a couple of things you can do to give yourself some backup. Refer to the forums for details but you can,
1. Forward all incoming mail to backup Yahoo/Gmail/other rock solid service address(es). This often allows you to access mail even during downtimes like this(the forwards are immediately processed upon mail arrival at MX)
2. Speaking of your DNS MX record, you can mod your records with a “backup” mail server for instances where your MX is actually down and not receiving mail. The server will accept mail and forward it on to your primary(DH) mailserver when it comes back up. Services like easydns.org offer this as part of their DNS management. Of course you could try it on your own too but probably not feasible for most of us.
Anyways, I feel for you. But don’t hold your breath about seeing the end of these sorts of outages.
Yeah, well people almost never get emails from me through my domain. Lovely work, guys.
The duration of the downtime and the lack of response was absolutely unacceptable
Leave and find another host then. Dont let the door hit you on the way out.
Don’t worry, the door won’t hit him on the way out. If the problems of the last few months continue he’ll have to hold it for the folks behind him.
gosh darn bad http conf bs again
I submit that Dreamhost employees should only be allowed to smoke pot off the clock.
And wouldn’t you know it, the middle of the night and the configuration panel is dead. Of course, we all know that comments aren’t the official support mechanism… that’s on the configuration panel! 
I can’t access panel.dreamhost.com now.
All is fucked.
Webmail is broken:
Warning: mysql_connect() [function.mysql-connect]: Can’t connect to MySQL server on ‘10.3.67.254′ (4) in /usr/local/squirrelmail-1.4.9a/plugins/dreamhost_virtualhosts/setup.php on line 189
1044: Access denied for user ’squirrelmail’@'192.168.10.0/255.255.255.0′ to database ‘dreamhost’
Hurrah to the geniuses that planned that.
Still getting this error on two of my webmail accounts and cannot get to the panel at all, it seems to be denying me access. Very odd. Have to post here, as I can’t reach there to open a ticket.
ERROR:
Warning: mysql_connect() [function.mysql-connect]: Can’t connect to MySQL server on ‘10.3.67.254′ (4) in /usr/local/squirrelmail-1.4.9a/plugins/dreamhost_virtualhosts/setup.php on line 189
1044: Access denied for user ’squirrelmail’@'192.168.10.0/255.255.255.0′ to database ‘dreamhost’
yup, both the panel and webmail is down, yipee. it’s ok though, their main site is still running (so helpful)
Last summer I had Mad Downtime here, but I waited through it because A) It’s REAL cheap, B) My friends loved em, and it sounded like all was cheery in Dreamhostland. But damn, if it hasn’t even been a year yet and I’m in the same boat again…time to move along. Movin’ right along, footloose and fancy free - Kermit
Off to Bluehost or some similar less-trafficked shite.
Kudos to OnceAndForAll … he/she hit the nail on the head.
For the single-digit-per-month cost of Dreamhost, it’s tough to complain about some downtime. If mission-critical uptime is the priority, then find a host with redundancy and written SLA’s. And get ready to pay for it.
Years ago I worked on an internet helpdesk for a cable company. We would get people calling in all the time, complaining about how their company was losing thousands of dollars per minute because of the downtime on their *home* internet connection.
It’s the same thing here. I use Dreamhost for a personal blog. If my email goes down for a bit, it’s not the end of the world. I can use gmail to send emails in a pinch, and really - it’s not like I’ll stop breathing or sprout cancer if my host goes down for a few hours.
I’m proud to say that the emails informing me of the 100’s of spam comments per day that require moderation have not slowed down one iota. Keep up the good work!
I’ve been using rollernet.us for sometime as a mail relay/backup mx. They’re very reasonably priced, offer virus/spam/greylisting which really cuts down on the junk as well…
mail is down again Wednesday morning. “don’t let the door hit you on the way out’? I think it’s okay for people who rely on their email all day for business to speak up when they’re frustrated by the service being down for hours at a time.
the problem is with teh storage subsystem… it’s happening again right now. shell access is OK, but if you are actively doing someting with files (try editing stuff… /sigh) it’s dog slow. I noticed it in the shell before I saw my webmail having issues.
Email seems to be down again. People sending me email are getting a ” Host unknown (Name server: fltr-in2.mail.dreamhost.com.: host not found)” error message. Sheesh.
Yeah. While outages are annoying, if you *need* guaranteed uptime, why are you using shared hosting at all? Get a dedicated setup, get SLAs, get fallback/redundant services. It doesn’t matter where you sign up with, if you use shared hosting you’re gonna have a much higher risk of having another user on the same box/cluster/grid node take you out for a while. Common sense IT management and provisioning, peeps.
I am new here so maby i am doing something wrong but i am still getting “ERROR: Connection dropped by IMAP server.” when i am loggin in on my webmail
yeah IMAP is down *again*.
Yup. Just noticed it but the panel lists the problem as being first reported 51 minutes ago.
I’ve been using webmail until 2 or 3 minutes ago, now IMAP down again
I’m having the same problem…. What is wrong with Dreamhost. This is affecting my business!
Mail still down here.
I’m bored with Dreamhost’s excuses. I signed up for a 2 year plan, and for nothing but heartache. I have also recommended people to dreamhost who rely on the service to work. I have not experienced this much down time with any mail provider or service provider for that matter. I’m reading over the SLA now to see if it is worth submitting to my lawyer. I’d like to see a class action suit.
This is getting rediculous guys! I’ve also had daily outages since switching my web hosting to DreamHost. I don’t know how you can justify this, but seriously, please try to fix it!
I am apauled. I have been a member for over 5 years, have moved more people over to these guys than I can count. Just moved over a friends hosting and did a redesign. This is his bread and butter. Now he is calling me. Basically saying this companies email blows. This has to get resolved or its going to be like the titanic.
Furthermore I just tried to sign up a new client and they instituted some new f’in account process where you have to fax over a credit card authorization form. This is a step back into the dark ages. I don’t know whats going on over there but they better get there act together. I doubt godaddy makes you go through this much pain, toil and anguish.
seems like it is back up. It would be nice if dreamhost would actually report such problems here… IMAP was out for around an hour and that is not important enough to list, but rebooting a computer for 5 minutes to add more ram is? was it not a system-wide problem or just affecting a few people? who knows, because they don’t tell you when you report the problem. thats what this site is for, but apparently not.
ummmm being an admin in RL ™, i’m fairly forgiving of hardware issues since i deal with those from day to day myself. but 3 days in a row guys? come on…. i’ve seen where ya’ll just move a server “to new hardware” on the status site all the time. can we get some hardware lovin’ going here? does the system need more ram? more cpu? what?
Update!!! This is broken again Feb 22nd. 3:30 EST. Same issue, my client called me and is rapidly loosing faith in your ability to run a mail server.
I haven’t been able to POP mail all day and no updates is pretty horrible.
My mail is still down as well. It’s very, very important that I get it back. Could we please get a fix on this? Or at least an alternate method to check our mail?
Still happening! Please fix this!!
Still happening for me this afternoon as well.. been a real pain this week. I hope it’s fully resolved soon!
Still having issues. Cannot check email et al and receiving mail is at a crawl from mail server.
Mail has been down since Thursday. Keep being told that server came back up from reboot in read only state and it is now fixed — this was prior to this morning’s outage. I am on a dedicated server with 60 domains. Luckily on 3 completely depend on this server for email — however I am tired of being screamed at for this problem because 3 sites without email is a big deal for those three sites. I’m afraid that the power issue will make my support request stay on the back burner. Other site functions are working. Should I just reboot again on my own? Thank you in advance for any advice.
This is a very poor show.
Once again smtp sending problems, but webmail works fine.
450 Server configuration problem
450 Server configuration problem
I have an incredible amount of SPAM and it isn’t stopping.
I have forward most of my emails to yahoo or hotmail to catch more of the spam. BUT now my inbox on webmail says over…
10,000 I can’t possibly delete them all , so please delete them all or tell me how I can.
I don’t use this email unless to forward to others. I rarely check it online.
Issues still showing for us. Can’t check mail and/or slow.
I am still seeing IMAP server issues (today is Monday Feb 26). This is about one week after Dreamhost says the problem was solved…
Still having problems but they are Intermittent. But they have not gone away. This issue needs to be reopened.
slunk might help you track down those nasty issues you have been having
http://www.splunk.com/
it is open source 
Ditto. IMAP and Squirrel have been flakey for the last couple days, completely broken all evening.
ERROR: Connection dropped by IMAP server.
Yep, same here. been unreliable for over a week now, and absolutely non-functional for the past 6 hours or so.
This is definitely not fixed. Can’t get into mail at all, webmail or POP mail, as at 08:23 UTC 01MAR07.
Ditto - my issues persist despite this supposedly being resolved.
I have been having issues for the past 12hrs, this issue needs to be resolved asap hopefully, come on DH!
All of my email accounts have been having the same issue. I feel like we’ve been dealing with it since we signed up with DH.
All my mail accounts are offline again this morning. This issue is NOT resolved as far as my account goes!
All of my accounts are down again……. Is there a way to reopen this ticket so that status is not closed/ fixed. There are too many people with open issues.
Their system is also tell me that it is out:
Verified smtp outage: xxx.com [stop tracking]
2 hours 21 mins ago: Outage verified: We are actively looking into resolving it.
2 hours 27 mins ago: Outage first reported
THE DH TEAM came thru once again, quick support and resolved my mail problem, every thing back to normal now.. hope it stays that way! Thanks.
I wish I could say the same - still down for me
Imap is still down for me. I’m seeing the “Connection Dropped by Imap Server” error message in webmail. Using Thunderbird, I’m getting connection timeout errors after the client send the login information. Using telnet I get now response back from the server after entering the login command.
No, this is NOT fixed.
This is infuriating to have Dreamhost continually claim that they’ve fixed issues when they haven’t.
Worse, the mail issues involve authentication problems that also prevent me from logging into the Control Panel, so I can’t even access Technical Support to try and have the issue resolved directly!!
Dreamhost … STOP WITH THE DISHONEST AND DISHONORABLE PRACTICE OF CLAIMING IN HEADLINES THAT YOU’VE FIXED OR RESOLVED PROBLEMS THAT YOU HAVE NOT.
If you honestly believe you’ve resolved or fixed a problem, then come back and review the feedback. If there is a pile of feedback indicating you have NOT solved the problem as you first thought, then go back, revise the headline, say you haven’t resolved it fully and are working on it.
BE HONEST.
And please get the problem resolved.
Mine is still down. I guess another business day has gone out the window for me…
yay…the daily ritual of logging what appears to be the exact same mailserver issue.
*starts looking for alternative hosting after only 2 weeks*
Pierce, Ic - I can relate on both counts! The company I’m working for are now starting to think I’m feeding them a line when I tell them my email is offline so I’ve not received anything, and I only signed up about 5 weeks back… and sadly am already wondering if that was such a wise move
1:15 pst
Problem is not fixed!!!!!
Is there any intelligent life out there!!!!!
How much more of this do you expect your customers to put up with!!!!
Having this problem again :
Warning: mysql_connect() [function.mysql-connect]: Too many connections in /usr/local/squirrelmail-1.4.9a/plugins/dreamhost_virtualhosts/setup.php on line 189
…too many webmail users?
Sean
I’ve been having a plethora of problems accessing my webmail the past month, the most recent being,
Warning: mysql_connect() [function.mysql-connect]: Too many connections in /usr/local/squirrelmail-1.4.9a/plugins/dreamhost_virtualhosts/setup.php on line 189
1044: Access denied for user ’squirrelmail’@'192.168.10.0/255.255.255.0′ to database ‘dreamhost’
It is getting a little old now, and its not fun hunting around for information as to why things are going wrong, is there any new information in regards to these on going issues?
Problem is not fixed!!!!!
please solve it!
another business day has gone lost…
Warning: mysql_connect() [function.mysql-connect]: Lost connection to MySQL server during query in /usr/local/squirrelmail-1.4.9a/plugins/dreamhost_virtualhosts/setup.php on line 189
1044: Access denied for user ’squirrelmail’@'192.168.10.0/255.255.255.0′ to database ‘dreamhost’
I’m getting the same error. I can’t believe mail is broken again a mere 2 days after they fixed the previous day+ outage. unbelievable.
I’ve been with Dreamhost since 1999, and mail was reasonably stable until the past few weeks. Unfortunately, I have a LOT of saved mail in various folders—several thousand messages or more. Does anyone know how to port these en masse to archived Gmail or otherwise extract it for future reference? Even a great big text dump would be OK: I could probably write a script to sort and format it for a pdflatex archive. Gmail’s the preferred option, though. Any thoughts?
Could not access the mail server Apr 14 2007
Receiving this error in webmail all weekend (Saturday, May 5th thru Monday, May 7th). Is it the same problems as before? Haven’t been able to be home to try my POP3 access.
Sometimes its database, sometimes its webmail page, sometimes its POP3 or IMAP… when its all working at once, then mail is ok
Great… funny thing, that this happend when i have critical mails…
Great job done! Dreamhost is the best hosting you can find!
It´s a very interesting post and simple answer of many questions.
Thank you
SEIKO CITIZEN TISSOT
It´s a very interesting post .
Thank you !!!
NÓŻ SCYZORYK GERBER CRKT
thanks for all
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Been having this problem for the last 6 hours, hope its back soon