WebWork 2.7
Our email system stopped working, it was working fine 24 hours ago. The problem is in both directions: (student ----> Instructor) and (Instructor ----> Students)
Maybe its a server issue or school email problem, but I would like to do some checking if I can. The school email seems to be functioning fine as I can send and receive. Are there some things I can do to determine where the fault is? I do have sudo access to the server, but I'm fairly new to server and WW maintenance.
The error we get is:
"Failed to open the mailer: connect() failed: Connection timed out"
Our ITS person, suggested we try the following and it did not have any affect:
sudo /etc/init.d/dns-clean restart
In my experience this is often caused by the sendmail daemon dying (assuming that's what your server is using for sending mail).
Try:
sudo service sendmail status
which should tell you if sendmail is running. If it gives you an error, or tells you that sendmail is not running, do:
sudo service sendmail restart
Hope this helps.
Danny
Thanks for the suggestion
I guess our server is not running this for sending mail. I got " unrecognized service" when checking status
I guess our server is not running this for sending mail. I got " unrecognized service" when checking status
Sounds your server isn't "seeing" the mail server. From your server, try TELNETing to the mail server.
$ telnet yourmailserver.domain.edu 25
If you don't get connected, it may be a firewall issue either on yours or their end.
If you do connect, just type quit to get out and you've ruled out a connectivity issue.
You may have to install the telnet app, if not already installed.
Hi Jim,
If webwork mail worked before, this is likely not a local problem, but a school problem. Perhaps the school changed their smtp server configuration and restricted use?
As far as I understand, then Webwork does not need a mail program (sendmail, exim4, postfix) installed on the webwork server if you use the school's smtp server for sending mail. In this case everything is handled by the webwork perl scripts and the school's smtp server. All you need is to configure correctly the two lines
$mail{smtpServer} = smtp.school.edu
$mail{smtpSender} = your_email@school.edu
in the webwork configuration files. One additional thing you may need to check with your ITS is if, in their smtp server configuration, they has given permissions to your_email@school.edu to send mail from webwork server.
Lars.
As a follow up to Lars's post…
If $mail{smtpServer} is set to a server name other than the WeBWorK server, then (as Lars suggests) you need to contact the people that manage that mail server.
If $mail{smtpServer} is set to 'localhost', then the WeBWorK server itself is handling the sending of mail. This is the case that I was trying to troubleshoot. In Red Hat and related flavours of linux, the default mail sender is sendmail, which is what my earlier suggestions were referring to. I don't know if there are other standard smtp packages in other flavours of linux. If so, these would have to be diagnosed separately.
Danny
I meant to post this earlier. The problem was a firewall issue. The ITS group at our school made firewall changes and did not update our WW server to accommodate these changes. Everything is working fine now.