Email Hosting – Troubleshooting Questions

Why does my migration fail?

Our Migration Centre is designed to make migrations as simple as possible, automating the process so that you can bring your sites to us efficiently and quickly.

However, sometimes these migrations can run into problems that result in errors which disrupt and prevent sites being brought across. Below are a few examples of common errors encountered during migrations, and how to go about fixing them to minimise disruption to your move.

cPanel migrations

Our cPanel migration tool uses the default backup facility available within cPanel to generate and move across a full account backup and convert it to a package on our side.

A common error seen is a migration idling at the stage ‘Waiting for cPanel Backup’. During this part of the migration, we've sent a request to the cPanel server to generate a backup file that we can use for the migration and upload it to 20i. Our system is waiting for confirmation of that upload so it can then proceed.

Depending on the size of the website(s) being moved, the backup can take some time to complete. However, it’s not expected that this should take a long period of time, especially if the site or sites being moved are small. In some cases, the cPanel backup process may be stalled on the server you’re migrating from, and it would be best to check the cPanel server and see why the backup has not been received by us.

The most common reasons this can occur are:

The account was over quota or suspended and the backup process was aborted
The firewall on the server blocks outbound connections and the FTP upload to 45.8.227.0/24 is blocked
The cPanel server has a high load average and so cPanel is automatically throttling the backup, but it's still ongoing
It's just a very large site and the backup process is still in progress. We'll start the import as soon as its received.

Plesk migrations

Our Plesk Migration tool connects via Plesk API to request a backup. This backup is then moved over via FTP, extracted and imported to bring the site across. So Plesk API access needs to be enabled on the Plesk setup you’re migrating from to allow the tool to work correctly. If you’re having difficulty migrating your site due to the migration failing right away, this is the likely cause. Check with your current host to confirm that Plesk API access is available for your account.

Alongside this, much as with cPanel backups, when we request the backup to be generated our system idles until confirmation the backup is ready. As such, if something on the system prevents the backup completing it can stall at this phase. Make sure your account has enough space for a backup, and that our IPs - 45.8.227.0/24 - are whitelisted so that this can complete.

WordPress FTP Migrations

The following conditions should be met for the WordPress FTP migration tool to migrate a site. These conditions are usually met by default, unless you've made changes to your WordPress installation.

If your migration fails, adjustments may need to be made to allow the migration tool to work correctly:

The migration tool looks for the directory with the wp-config.php configuration file. If you’ve manually moved the wp-config.php file to another directory (sometimes done for security) then you’d need to move it to be with the rest of the core WordPress files.
File and directory permissions should be consistent with WordPress best practice: i.e. directories set to 755 and files set to 644
Our IPs used for the FTP migration tool should not be blocked. Please whitelist IP range 45.8.227.0/24 to avoid this.
Ensure the website's domain name points to the correct web host. If the nameservers for the domain name don’t point to the right host then the migration will fail.

If you’re having trouble diagnosing what’s wrong, please feel free to contact us.

Heart Migrations

Migration from Heart need Heart Internet Reseller API access. We use the API to communicate with Heart’s side and generate the necessary backups to bring your site across.

For full details on how to access this, see our guide on migrating from Heart.

If these details aren't available to you, or your migration fails immediately after entering the details, it’s likely the case that your account doesn’t have sufficient API access and you’ll need to contact Heart support to confirm this.

Migrations and Transfers

Email Hosting – Troubleshooting

Richard Chambers

How to View Mail Logs in My20i

Using our new mail logs feature, you can view all the logs for incoming and outgoing emails for your mailboxes.

How Viewing The Mail Logs Can Help

The mail logs provide several key details that can help you troubleshoot issues with sending and receiving, such as the IP and email address of both the sender and receiver, and the time and date the email was sent or received.

They also show the status of the email, such as "Delivered", which can help you confirm the successful delivery of the email.

Checking The Mail Logs

You can check the mail logs from the Mail Logs page, found from a package’s control panel.

You’ll first want to select a mailbox to view:

Once selected, please allow time for the initial set of logs to load.

From here, you can further filter the emails using a selection of options, such as if the email was incoming or outgoing and the date range to search:

Once selected, you can find a list of emails matching the selected options:

After finding the relevant email, you can click “View Log” to see detailed information about that specific email:

You can also filter by Delivery Status by selecting the status you want to view from the dropdown menu in the table header.

For incoming emails this allows you to view Delivered and Bounced emails, and for outgoing emails you can view Sent and Rejected emails.

Email Hosting – Troubleshooting

Joshua Rosato

Why can I not send emails to Gmail email addresses?

When an email is sent to Gmail without an SPF (Sender Policy Framework) record, it may fail to be delivered or may be marked as spam by Gmail's email filtering system. SPF is a mechanism used to prevent email spoofing and unauthorised use of a domain's email addresses. It is a TXT record that specifies which mail servers are authorized to send emails on behalf of a domain.

If your domain name does not include an SPF record then this is likely that you will receive bouncebacks when sending to Gmail email addresses. These bouncebacks will look something like this:

A message that you sent could not be delivered to one or more of its
 recipients. This is a permanent error. The following address(es) failed:
  yourgmailaddress@gmail.com
    host gmail-smtp-in.l.google.com [142.251.168.27]
    SMTP error from remote mail server after pipelined end of data:
    550-5.7.26 This mail has been blocked because the sender is unauthenticated.
    550-5.7.26 Gmail requires all senders to authenticate with either SPF or DKIM.
    550-5.7.26
    550-5.7.26  Authentication results:
    550-5.7.26  DKIM = did not pass
    550-5.7.26  SPF [your20idomain.com] with ip: [185.151.28.66] = did not pass
    550-5.7.26
    550-5.7.26  For instructions on setting up authentication, go to
    550 5.7.26  https://support.google.com/mail/answer/81126#authentication fk12-20020a05600c0ccc00b00410c61b9be8si1229861wmb.183 - gsmtp

An SPF record can be added to your domain using these steps:

Firstly, access the DNS Management interface for your domain name. If the domain is registered with us, you can access this from the Manage Domains area of the control panel. If the domain is not with us but is assigned to a hosting package, you can reach this interface via the Manage Hosting -> [Package Name] -> Options -> Manage DNS section.

Towards the bottom of the Manage DNS page, you will see 3 inputs to allow you to add new records. To add it:

- Leave the 'Name' field blank
- Select 'TXT' for Type
- Enter v=spf1 include:spf.stackmail.com a mx -all as data
- Then save the changes. Your domain is now protected by an SPF record.

See our video on how to add an SPF record here:

More information can be found here.

Email Hosting – Troubleshooting

Chris Wright