Username/Password Mismatch

[tinnel]

I've got a reoccurring problem -- this is now the third time this exact problem has happened. I check email using Eudora Pro and everything is fine. A few hours later, from the same computer I try again and I get a "username/password" mismatch error. Note that I did not change the password and have verified that caps lock and num lock are not turned on. For giggles, I just tried pulling pop through Netscape mail and I get the exact same error. Once this happens, it persists for days. I even tried creating a new email account in cpanel and I immediately get the same problem with the new account. No one in support has been able to fix this problem. Each time, I have to start from scratch. They tell me to try the same things which are impossible to do in Eudora and which have failed to solve the problem in the past. The problem has mysteriously disappeared, has never really been solved, and has continued to reoccur. Note that I have about 6 different email accounts at different places and I use a single Eudora application with all the email accounts. This is the only place I have this problem.

Has anyone else seen a problem like this?

~~~~~~

"Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results." Albert Einstein

[Connie]

I often get the errors you mention. I don't check e-mail
with Eudora but Eudora is my e-mail client. I use Mail Washer to check e-mail.

Then I download the e-mail I want with Eudora.

Mail Washer lets me know if there is a
problem with connecting to the server.

Normally the errors you refer to only last
15 minuets or so unless the server is down.

If you have prolonged problems you should submit
a support ticket

[JonathanB]

I did see the same error message when I accessed email from my domain on a computer at work (which has an older version of Eudora). I think for me it happened when my domain got moved to the new server.

After seeing the error message, I changed the email settings.

The user name was:
user@domain.com

I changed it to:
user+domain.com

And that did the trick. Since then I've had no problem. I think it has to do with the fact that it will combine the username with the mail server to come up with the full address (user@domain.com@domain.com). The two @ symbols confuse some email programs.

Interestingly enough, I did not have to make any change on my copy of Eudora 6 here at home. I haven't seen any error messages with that.

[tinnel]

Low and behold. Using user+domain.com worked! Thanks. Last time this happened, support told me to use username@domain.com. That just didn't work, and besides, I've had this account for several months and always just used username. Where was the announcement that any change was required?

There's still the question of why username alone works sometimes but not all the time. It should either work -- or not work. consistently.

BTW. I have a totally different domain and email with Jag and it only requires username. Can you say confusing? Sigh.

Also csslam - i did use a ticket - I updated the last ticket I had opened on this issue. They told me to do the same thing as last time which didn't work. Apparently the person didn't read the entire trail of the ticket to know it didn't work. They have not responded since then.

[tinnel]

Just curious... does anyone know if this is a cpanel/cppop issue? I know of no other pop server that requires this (not even pop for exchange!)

[Connie]

User name should only work with your cathall account. The full e-mail address is
required for pop accounts. The @ displays as a + . Confusing but @ is required.

Not sure how you have been able to check e-mail for months but glad you
got the problem worked out.

Cheers:

[jason]

Ever since I've been hosted here, almost 3 1/2 years now, the "preferred" method for accessing pop mail is using the full email address. That's just the way CPanel works. Sometimes just the username will work, but in my experience this is pretty intermittant. Its always best to use the full email addrress. I've always done it with the @ sign. This is the first I've heard of using + successfully, but if it works, go for it.

--Jason

[tinnel]

cathall account? what is this?

Still... the @ issue seems to be specific to Jag, or at least cppop. No other ISP I've used (Earthlink, Comcast, ValueWeb, and a few others) has required this. Plus, I wasn't told when I moved here that the @ was necessary, which is why I've never used it. I have two different mail servers for my day job company. They don't require it. Just not standard pop...

Interesting thing... I'm on nickel. I just noticed that the IPs changed today. This problem started this afternoon. Seems I recall that last time I had this problem the IPs were changed (my domain has been moved between two servers several times due to some "unfortunate" dns issues that took days to resolve.)

[jason]

You're right, it is a CPanel thing. Most "normal" mail servers just require the username, but CPanel wants it all so it can differentiate between joe@domain1.com and joe@domain2.com. Other CP software makes the distinction in other ways (such as the domain name/IP address you are using to retrieve the mail), but this is how CPanel does it.

As for the IP changes, that's an ongoing thing that JPC is doing to improve reliability (ironic that it may have caused a preblem, eh?). I can't confirm or deny if this is the actual reason for the problems of just an unfortunate coioncidence, but you may be on to something. Are you using your IP address to connect to the server of your domain name? If you are using the IP, the change may be the cause. Try changing to domain name and see if that helps.

--Jason

[tinnel]

Hmmm. Perhaps it may work for a while using just the username, but if someone else adds the same username on a different domain, it will stop working because cpanel has an ambiguous situation to deal with. Apparently no one else has my username -- yet, which is why it has always worked for me. In my case, I have had this strange issue where I've had two copies of the same domain on different servers, which has caused cpanel to get confused. Supposedly this got cleaned up, and everything was working... until the IPs changed again. Makes me wonder if something bad is still hanging out there.

BTW. I've been using the domain name to pull email, not IP. I try to never use IP because I know that IPs can change.

I think long term this IP change stuff will be better for the customers. It has been frustrating dealing with the plethora of issues that have resulted though...

[JonathanB]

Originally posted by tinnel
cathall account? what is this?

A catchall account is the address where any mail that is sent to an unknown user at your domain goes. When You first get your account, Jaguar automatically sets this up using (I think) your login name as the user name. In cpanel, under POP Email accounts, it's the one you cannot change or delete.

You can change where unknown mail is sent in your cpanel under "default addresses."

99.9% of those messages sent to my domains are spam, so I changed the default address to ":fail:" which bounces the messages back to the sender.

Hope this helps.

[tinnel]

Thanks. :-) Amazing what one missing letter does to an interpretation. Changing to fail is a great idea. I think I'll do that NOW.

[JonathanB]

You're welcome! I saw that tip a while ago here in the forums and I thought it was a godsend.

F-Y-I, you can add a message after the :fail: just don't use spaces. I have mine set as the following:

:fail:unknown-email-address

When the message bounces back it says something like:

The message you sent has had a permanent failure and was not deliverable.

user@domain.com
unknown-email-address