WebMail login problems
Posted (September 4th, 2007 at 11:21 am PST) by briansWe are fully aware of the problems that you’re experiencing accessing WebMail. Our Admins are working towards resolving this issue. We sincerely apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused. Please check back for future updates.
Update: 11:53am: The time was incorrect on one of our webmail machines, causing it to expire sessions almost immediately. We’ve corrected the time and everything appears to be back to normal.
Thank you for your patience!
59 Responses to “WebMail login problems”
I’ve got a way with resolving the issue- how about dumping Squirrelmail entirely and get something that isn’t an utter piece of crap? I’ve had nothing but problems with Squirrelmail ever since i’ve joined Dreamhost. It is, to be blunt, a frikkin’ joke. There has to be something better out there.
Squirrel mail is a lot better than a bunch of the other stuff out there.
I like to think it’s something that happens while “upgrading”… I hope I’m right… 
Seems we can’t go 3 days without a major webmail outage lately. Sigh.
Can we either switch over to Zimbra or just make Zimbra available?
When I can’t access my mail during business hours the Severity is High not Medium
maybe it should be called “squirrely mail” or “roadkill” mail
3rd week in a row. More dreamhost problems.
grrr.. Squirrel mail is starting to not be good. I need reliable webmail for my business.
squirrelmail ain’t great, but i’ve never had problems like this with it on any other host. unless there have been upgrades to it that screwed it up, i have to guess this is more of a DH issue than with squirrelmail itself.
that said, i’m still going to install a different webmail application soon to see if i can have better luck.
Dreamhost is just following the new American pastime, screw up, keep screwing up and then screw up some more. Then apologize like hell… “We sincerely apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused. Please check back for future updates.”
i hope these upgrades improve the anti-spam config ’cause we’re getting tired of the increasing spam on our inboxes since june
I’ve used squirrell mail in the past on other hosts without any problems. I think this is a DH problem.
Also, if you’re running a business on a
I’ve used squirrell mail in the past on other hosts without any problems. I think this is a DH problem.
Also, if you’re running a business on a less than $10 month shared web host, you’re probably going to have bigger issues than occasional webmail problems.
Ok, your support page is not working - just keeps and looping back to first page.
No phone number can be found to call you about.
one full year of logs have disappeared
please contact me ASAP
The login problems inspired me to follow these instructions http://wiki.dreamhost.com/index.php/RoundCube over lunch. No problems, vastly improved interface. I haven’t disabled my webmail access for squirellmail but I may in time.
What about allowing an ssh access, like mbox, or something similar?
In reply to:
“Also, if you’re running a business on a less than $10 month shared web host, you’re probably going to have bigger issues than occasional webmail problems.”
It is a valid point… $10 a month for business critical email and web hosting does not really make sense. However, it does not matter if you spend $10 dollars a month or $500 dollars a month on web/email hosting. Hardware goes down. Configurations go “loopy” (highly technical term I use often). The only thing that changes relative to how much you pay are your expectations of your web hosting provider. The question could be posed to Dreamhost about a SLA or service level agreement, but what would be the point… to get a percentage of that $10 a month back? We all pay under $100 a month for a suprisingly good set of features. Yes, it goes down from time to time, yes it is having some significant issues right now but compare that to bringing all these features and the hardware to run it in house for your company I.T. department…. and quite possibly… it could still go down internally!!!
It’d be nice if there was a way to extend the session timeout in squirrelmail. Several times I’ve been composing a long email, I click send, and Boom! I’m logged out and have no way to retrieve what I just wrote.
I’ve gotten to where if I’m writing a long email, or taking a long time to compose it, I will copy it to my clipboard when I finish so I can paste it if I lose my session, but still, it’d be nice if the session length was extended.
I have seen in DH webmail that if it expires, it will bring back the email you were writing before.
Have you looked in the webmail Options/Display Preferences/QuickSave Auto Message Save and Recovery settings?
You can customize how often the javascript in webmail autosaves.
Repeat with me “NTP it’s your friend” 
“What about allowing an ssh access, like mbox, or something similar?”
You don’t have SSH access now? I do… I mostly read email using Pine at home, and use webmail at work.
*bzzt* Still can’t access webmail. Shocker!
Still can’t login - even though it says resolved.
in general, i am utterly happy with DreamHost.
what i do find irksome is when a problem is labeled RESOLVED, and it is, in fact, not resolved.
like this webmail issue, for instance.
can i access webmail?
nope.
is the issue resolved?
nope.
does the emergency status page indicate that it is resolved?
yup.
sigh.
Hay Brian:
http://wiki.dreamhost.com/index.php/RoundCube
Very, very, very cool. Not able to use secure certificate by DH for SquirrelMail, but… what the hey. Don’t use that anyway.
Oh, and…. running a non-profit biz on DH is a way to go since it’s not “mission” critical to have instant access to email in this particular instance. Tho it could need it, in which case a dedicated server (by DH or other) would help; but not with network outages - don’t see a lot of those with DH, just pieces of the network seem to go “loopy” now and then (plus they’re real good at noticing the problems using enough but not to much detail with helpful and diligent support). It’s unreasonable to ask an executive to use PINE for email, and with a non-profit board there’s little means to afford an in-house sysop that’d understand how to deal with shared/dedicated hosting let alone in-house hosting of web and email.
Hey, all of you guys recommending another mail system.
IT’S NOT SQUIRRELMAIL THAT IS THE PROBLEM.
The problem is authentication (which happens with every web mail product) and infrastructure (that’s what happens when you have to support a million+ email addresses.)
You can install roundcube or whatever locally on your own server and it may work when the shared webmail is down, but if the network is down, or servers are down or dns is down it’s not going to make the slightest bit of difference.
Get an IMAP client and then you’ll get true redundancy and push mail. They’re cheap or free and work like a dream - even the POS iPhone can do it.
Lee - Dude they don’[t often (pronounce this as “Ever” and you’ll hear it right) read here you really need to get to the support page or contact them through the sales contact email. Sorry, just the way it is. There is no available phone number to call because if they are doing their work right they are working from the request queue. That’s what you get for cheap. If you want someone to bitch at on a phone line, try any 976 number and see how expensive they are.
P. S. I don’t like the outages either. But bitching or recommending a change because you mistakenly think it will help is not really terribly helpful.
Now, if you’ve got a spare DNS server or non-cisco router….
In fact, DH ought to threaten to post “Powered by Cisco, sometimes” images on their sites… That might help get networking worked out.
@ Jeff
Try submitting a bug report as an enhancement.
Consider, however, that we are here because we can’t access our webmail. Then reckon how much of DH’s employees’ time should be spent enhancing webmail versus ensuring that webmail can be accessed in the first place — and whether the enhancement would be perfect or would cause more time wastes later.
Were you aware that the reason you can’t see your junk mail if you use a mail client (e.g., Thunderbird) is because DH has already hacked SquirrelMail to show that folder? That doesn’t seem to have gone well. I think a different webmail application would probably be the better answer. It might allow changes to the parameter you want to change, let DH have a junk mail folder that is in our actual webmail, and prevent the ridiculous fuck-uppery we’ve seen for the last [amount of time during which reader has paid DH for service].
@ Jeff
Meanwhile, I guess you can compose in Notepad…
Man. That isn’t worth 10$ a month. I’m going to submit a “SquirrelMail is unacceptable” ticket now. Maybe I’ll make a blog on DH to tell you how it goes. Based on the last few months’ performance, though, you probably will never read either that blog or this message.
Actually, dreamhoststatus.com seems to be surprisingly robust. I wonder who hosts it.
Dreamhost is giving me too much problem. Where is the lowest service level I can expect?
Where is VOO when we need him … these comments most certainly need a response from the voice of the Lord.
Still having webmail / POP3 problems here. Guess it isn’t all resolved afterall…
Tickets submitted!
I wondered why my webmail said 11:01am when it was only 10:21am. Thanks for the hard work in fixing issues as quickly as possible.
Last couple of weeks have been very bad. The only reason I’m staying is for the cool features, semi-awesome support and $22 for the first year.
Dude who wrote: “Hey, all of you guys recommending another mail system.
IT’S NOT SQUIRRELMAIL THAT IS THE PROBLEM.”
While it may not have been Squirrelmail that was the problem it was a server that Squirrelmail resides on. Hardware, yes; but it directly effected their managed webmail application. Installing my own webmail app on a subdomain did provide a solution (a workaround) to the timeout issues. Of course, if the server on which I installed RoundCube goes down, it goes down - but then, perhaps, I could log into Squirrelmail…
i recive this error
ERROR: Conexión terminada por el servidor IMAP.
Query: SELECT “INBOX”
what suppose i must to do??????
Help Me!!
@Jorge - You should submit a support ticket via the panel. From that error message, it looks like IMAP may be down on your mail server. Or your authentication failed, which was the problem yesterday.
@Brian - I agree that SquirrelMail is not always the problem, and that anyone who doesn’t like it can easily install their own webmail application. But many of the issues are not with SquirrelMail itself, but with the IMAP services from the mail servers themselves (see Jorge’s error message above), or with authentication, or with the network, all of which would affect any mail application that was using those things. I’ve been fortunate that my mail does not seem to have been affected much by these outages (I only use webmail a few times a day), but I can see how those who are dependent on their email would be scrambling for a more robust solution.
@ Matt
Pinging dreamhoststatus.com [208.96.10.218]
Search results for: 208.96.10.218
OrgName: ServePath, LLC
OrgID: SERVEP
Address: 360 Spear Street.
Address: Suite 200
City: San Francisco
StateProv: CA
PostalCode: 94105
Country: US
ReferralServer: rwhois://rwhois.servepath.com:4321
NetRange: 208.96.0.0 - 208.96.63.255
CIDR: 208.96.0.0/18
NetName: SERVEPATH-BLK3
NetHandle: NET-208-96-0-0-1
Parent: NET-208-0-0-0-0
NetType: Direct Allocation
NameServer: NS.SERVEPATH.COM
NameServer: NS1.SERVEPATH.COM
Comment: http://www.servepath.com/
RegDate: 2005-12-19
Updated: 2006-12-28
RNOCHandle: SN458-ARIN
RNOCName: NOC, ServePath, ServePath
RNOCPhone: +1-415-252-3600
RNOCEmail: noc@servepath.com
OrgTechHandle: SN458-ARIN
OrgTechName: NOC, ServePath, ServePath
OrgTechPhone: +1-415-252-3600
OrgTechEmail: noc@servepath.com
I am still having problems logging in AND staying connected to my webmail.
Is this related to this issue?
Thank you.
Where is VOO when we need him … these comments most certainly need a response from the voice of the Lord.
I think I heard somewhere he found himself a nice little vacation spot about 2 miles south of hell…
Peet - the issue is reported as resolved. Submit a ticket.
Comments posted here may not be viewed by DreamHost staff at all. This is not a way to contact DreamHost
And Matt, it’s really easy to look that kind of stuff up for yourself in the future. Note Shii’s issue with the dns entry being expired? It took LONGER to ask the question than to get the answer for yourself.
And peet - it doesn’t appear that you’re the only one having issues with mail still.
I had a lot of stored emails in my account and also in the Sent folder and all have gone!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
My webmail is still giving me an incorrect login, and the panel is reacting VERY SLOWLY as well, so I can’t get in to submit a support ticket.
Webmail was fine for me for the last few days, just now it’s started erroring out.
Webmail was fine here, but now is saying that my login info is incorrect. I am able to login to the mailbox manager with the info, however. Off to try for a support ticket.
OMG not again1!!! This is getting retarded. Its a crap shot from day to day to see what is going to stop working again. I guess webmail is sort of working. Seems my 4th attempt finaly went through after a min or 2. Got an e-mail from one of the people that frequents our site. Apparently she was trying to load the site and after several minutes it was trickling in. Just wonder how many people this happens to that doesn’t email me. After being here for a couple of years, I’m about ready to give up. If just a week would go by without some sort of outage….
@ Dudes
Yeah, so I thought it was clear that I didn’t actually want the information. It IS clear that dreamhoststatus is hosted by someone that isn’t dreamhost because dreamhoststatus is not cripplingly unusable. My wondering was a rhetorical device used to to point out that even DH knows better than to rely on DH.
And I have no idea what you’re talking about with this Shii DNS expiration mumbo-jumbo.
Hurrah! Fixed.
This is BullSH*t.
SICK OF IT.
Mines been up and down again *sigh*
Mine works 
Mine’s good
Currently mine is working…but I do have problems occasionally.
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GAH
what’s with the last couple of weeks? it seems to have been especially bad…!