TIPS Not receiving voicemail e-mail attachments from extentions

[Roddj12]

Hello gang:

This is my first post but I have been reading and learning from the forum for now a few months. I have tried to resolve this issue, but nothing has worked. I hope to find a solution amongst the collective here.

I recently noticed that I am no longer receiving my voicemail messages via e-mail attachment. It just stopped without warning. I have subsequently updated to PIAF 12, but the issue started way before, since end of June (June 27) was the last time I received a voicemail message. I have checked under the ext config, voicemail is enabled and voicemail attachment is also enabled.

I have religiously updated the modules and i am now beginning to believe that this has been a mistake on my part. I believe one of the updates may have caused this feature to stop working properly.

I have performed an amportal Restart multiple times, to no vail.

Please help.

Using PIAF green on a Rentpbx.com server.

Thanks thanks.

 

[Brian Simmons]

I'm experiencing the same thing. I haven't looked into any solutions, but I simply wanted to let you know that you are not alone. I'm looking forward to seeing people's suggestions!

 

[Brian Simmons]

First step is to determine if the system can even send a message. At the CLI:

echo "test" | mail -s testmessage [email protected]

Not to steal the thread, but my system cannot seem to send the email. I don't have an error in the logs, but I never get the test email. (I should also note that it did work at one time, but hasn't worked for a while. We just get so few messages at home that I haven't worried about it).

 

[rentpbx]

Please check the /var/log/maillog. It is easier if you can make a call and let it go to voice-mail and watch the log at the same time.
If you see in the log an attempt form your PBX to send the voicemail but you do not received the email, you may want to try http://pbxinaflash.com/community/index.php?threads/install-gmail-as-smtp-relay-host-for-sendmail.974. It is about relaying your email through Gmail. You can also use other email relay provider. Relaying the email may be the easiest way to enhance your email deliver-ability.
If you do not see any attempt to send out email, there is a configuration issue on the PBX side. The best thing to look for in this case is in /var/log/asterisk/full. You need to trace log lines around the part where voice-mail about to end. Let see if there are anything out of ordinary.

 

[Roddj12]

I tried to view /var/lo
g/maillog and /var/log/asterisk/full, received a message, "permission denied."

I am using Putty.exe.

 

[dandy_don]

I can confirm that email of voice message no longer works. I have had an incredible pbx server working for the past three years. Up until ~6 months ago, the voice mail messaging (sending voice mail .mp3 files as e-mail attachments) worked beautifully. About 6 months ago, it all stopped working. I have tried setting the voice mail to my other e-mail accounts and never does the message appear to be sent. I've ignored it until now, thinking that building a new server would resolve that problem but the new server doesn't send e-mail either...

I have looked in the var/log/maillog of the long-serving server and there is nothing there to indicate an error.

Tonight I built another server based upon an beaglebone black. It does NOT send e-mail messaged either although it is configured to do so. The new system does not have a maillog that I can find but based upon testing today, it should have captured and sent ~12 voice mail messages. So far none of them appear to have been sent.

This was such a great feature -- I hate to see it "go away"...

Any help is much appreciated.

Thanks,
Don

 

[Roddj12]

Indeed, this was such a great and useful feature. Given that businesses are relying on features of such, it would be important and perhaps respectful to business owners to receive notification of the elimination of features to avoid frustration.

Your timeline matches mine. the last time I received a voicemail e-mail attachment was late in June. I subsequently upgraded to PIAF 12 with a new surver and the problem has persisted. I hope they will bring it back.

 

[matthew]

In all likelihood, you simply have an email issue. A lot of ISPs block outbound email that originates from non-business/dynamic IP accounts as an anti-spam measure. Here's a simple test.

Log into your pabx and get a command prompt.
If the email address you are trying to send attachments to is [email protected], then type:

dig -t mx example.com

If you don't have dig, install it with:

yum install bind-utils

In your dig results, you should see something like the following. There may be one or more results. These are the servers that receive email for example.com:

;; ANSWER SECTION:
example.com.          1450    IN      MX      10 mx01.hosting-provider.net.
example.com.          1450    IN      MX      20 mx02.hosting-provider.net.

Now you can test if your pabx can send email directly to the example.com mail servers with:

telnet mx01.hosting-provider.net 25

Try all servers if your dig returned more than one. If successful you will get a response. Maybe something like:

Trying 123.124.125.6...
Connected to mx01.hosting-provider.net.
Escape character is '^]'.
220 mx01.hosting-provider.net ESMTP Postfix

You can type "quit" to get out..

OK, so you were successful, but when you run the command that lgaetz posted above you don't receive the test email. In that case, you most likely have a misconfiguration in the email server setup on your pabx. If so, it's going to take a bit more effort to resolve.

If you don't get a response such as above, then your ISP (or maybe your own firewall) is blocking port 25 outbound and you'll need to work around that. The most common way is to set your mail server to relay through your ISP's outbound mail server. Get in touch with their support to find out the name of it and repeat the test above. I wrote a post on how to configure sendmail to relay here.

 

[dandy_don]

Matthew,
Thanks for the reply.
I have four different e-mail accounts from different providers. I have tried using each of these four accounts and there is never any mail that gets through. They all worked fine up until about 6 months ago...
I have gone through the various e-mail provider's spam filters, etc., to make sure the message didn't get trapped. There are never any e-mail messages sent. This had been working great until about 6 months ago. On a new server, created this weekend, the same problem is present and none of the four unique e-mail addresses appear to work. I've followed all of the setup instructions to the letter.
I have a roadrunner.com e-mail that I use to send mail from my PC. It is behind the same firewall as the two Incredible PBX servers. Roadrunner uses port 25 for outbound mail and my router and ISP are probably not blocking port 25 outbound as I am able to send e-mail via Roadrunner.
I executed the dig command and got this response:
example.com. 2187 IN SOA sns.dns.icann.org. noc.dns.icann.org. 2014111208 7200 3600 1209600 3600

However, when I execute:

root@raspbx:~# telnet sns.dns.icann.org 25
Trying 199.4.28.26...

It just hangs there indefinitely.

When I try the other address I get this response:
root@raspbx:~# telnet noc.dns.icann.org 25
telnet: could not resolve noc.dns.icann.org/25: Name or service not known
root@raspbx:~#

I will investigate your post on configuring the sendmail relay.

If you have any other ideas they would be appreciated.

Thanks,
Don

 

[dandy_don]

Matthew,

This is interesting... I'm following the postings about sendmail, etc. The old server has an /etc/mail directory. However, the new server built this weekend does not have an /etc/mail directory. I went into module admin to make sure that I hadn't missed something. Do you know why this directory was not created? I'm assuming that the email routines were not installed on the new server. However the old server ceased sending e-mail ~6 months ago.

Thanks,
Don

 

[rossiv]

dandy_don The server you tried to telnet into isn't a mail server. The IP address you got was the DNS server providing the result for your "dig" of example.com. No mail server IP address/hostname was returned because "example.com" has no MX records.

You'll want to try telnetting into something else, like smtp.gmail.com. Try that and see if you get a response.

Just because you can use 25 to RoadRunner doesn't mean they aren't blocking 25 to outside SMTP servers like GMail.

 

[matthew]

dandy_don I don't have a Rasp Pi to try on. My instruction was for a generic CentOS based PIAF install. I'm not sure what mail server is used on that platform, but some simple instructions for setting it to relay mail via a smart host will certainly be found with Google. Possibly someone here can be more instructive in that case.

Edit: clarified that we are trying to send mail via a smart host if necessary, not just setting the system to relay.

 

[dandy_don]

Rossiv,

Thanks for the reply. I did as you suggested and am able to telnet on port 25 to gmail. Here is the exchange:

root@raspbx:~# telnet smtp.gmail.com 25
Trying 173.194.68.108...
Connected to gmail-smtp-msa.l.google.com.
Escape character is '^]'.
220 mx.google.com ESMTP 34sm21804060qgt.19 - gsmtp
quit
221 2.0.0 closing connection 34sm21804060qgt.19 - gsmtp
Connection closed by foreign host.

Its interesting (and unfortunately comforting) that some other folks are having the same issue. I'll keep plugging away.

Matthew -- I'll try and find info about mail relay for google & beaglebone black.

Thanks all!

Don

 

[matthew]

dandy_don Cool. You don't seem to be port blocked, and your system can resolve names. At this point, I don't think you need to bother with sending mail via a smart host. You might want to delve into your mail server's log files and post up what error you are getting.

 

[AndyInNYC]

Roddj12,

Given the difficulties you're having, I would suggest you uninstall your mail client and then either reinstall it or switch to a different one (Exim, etc.).

Something is borked in your install - I'm on RentPBX with 3 machines without issue sending mail, so it isn't a RentPBX/'generic' install issue.

Andrew

 

[dandy_don]

Matthew,

Thanks. OK I can see that I am getting a "Date format error" on my long-standing server in the /var/log/maillog

There are actually two messages: One from Dec 1, and one from this evening.
The beaglebone black server does not have any maillog entries in /var/log/
Isn't the mail server normally installed during the incredible pbx install on the beaglebone black?

Below are two snippets from the maillog from the long-standing server after calling in and leaving a voice message:
Thanks,
Don

Dec 1 21:44:42 pbx sendmail[14698]: sB22idMe014696: to=<[email protected]>, ctladdr=<[email protected]> (498/496), delay=00:00:02, xdelay=00:00:02, mailer=esmtp, pri=155213, relay=mx2.sbcglobal.am0.yahoodns.net. [98.136.217.192], dsn=5.6.0, stat=Data format error
Dec 1 21:44:42 pbx sendmail[14698]: sB22idMe014696: sB22igMe014698: DSN: Data format error

Dec 3 20:25:03 pbx sendmail[14105]: sB41P0Xt014099: to=<[email protected]>, ctladdr=<[email protected]> (498/496), delay=00:00:02, xdelay=00:00:01, mailer=esmtp, pri=145808, relay=mx2.sbcglobal.am0.yahoodns.net. [98.138.206.39], dsn=5.6.0, stat=Data format error
Dec 3 20:25:03 pbx sendmail[14105]: sB41P0Xt014099: sB41P3Xt014105: DSN: Data format error

 

[EndeavorPBX]

I believe that the problem that all of us are having here is that the people asking for help aren't providing enough information to allow anyone to help them.

There are many ways to configure your system to send email. The oldest and simplest way is to configure your system to simply forward outgoing mail to your ISP's mail server on port 25. That was how everybody did it years ago, and it worked just fine. But, then people started using their ISP's mail server to send spam, so a lot of ISPs started blocking their mail server or requiring credentials to send email. People who sent Spam would continue using their own ISP, but route their Spam messages through someone else's email server that did not require credentials. The ISPs got flack, so many started blocking port 25, which was commonly used by mail servers that don't required a username and password, altogether.

To make matters more complicated, there are at least two major ways to send email: SendMail is the older CentOS mail program. Postfix is a newer email program that works on CentOS. I believe that Ward is still including SendMail with PIAF, but the FreePBX Distro uses Postfix.

Personally, I prefer Postfix because its much easier to set up.

The point of all of this discussion is that until you tell us how you had your email set up, we have no way of helping you figure out why it isn't working. If you set-up your SendMail to forward mail to port 25 of your ISPs mail program, the reason it stopped working one day is probably that your ISP started blocking port 25, or required credentials. If you set-up SendMail to use credentials on port 25, your provider may have blocked port 25, or switched to another port.

Personally, I prefer to use Postfix, and to configure it to forward to a Gmail account. Mine FreePBX Distro is still sending email just fine with that configuration.

If your system has Sendmail, but you want to try Postfix, these commands should work to disable sendmail and install and enable Postfix:

service sendmail stop
chkconfig sendmail off
yum install postfix
service postfix start
chkconfig postfix on
and then follow these instructions to configure Postfix to relay your emails through a gmail account...

http://community.freepbx.org/t/configuring-postfix-as-a-gmail-relay-on-freepbx-distro/19952/4

 

[billsimon]

Below are two snippets from the maillog from the long-standing server after calling in and leaving a voice message

A quick Google search for "Data format error" and mail shows that this is likely spam mitigation. It appears that you are trying to send mail directly from your PBX to the recipient without going through a relay. For whatever reason, you're now being blocked. Check http://www.spamhaus.org/lookup/ to see whether your IP is in the list. Make sure your forward and inverse DNS records match. If you're using something.dyndns.org as your domain, as shown in the log, then they probably do not. Mail recipients do not mess around anymore. Unless you really look like a reputable mail server, they're not going to accept messages from you.

Get a free sendgrid.com account and send up to 400 voicemail messages per day without any downstream blockage. Configuration of postfix to relay mail through SendGrid is simple and documented clearly on their help pages.

 

[dandy_don]

Unfortunately I am no asterisk expert, nor do I know what the mail server is that comes installed in the incredible pbx software.
That said, I am able to follow instructions quite well. The instruction to get this working on a new install was to "simply plug in your e-mail address"... or words to that effect.
I did just that when I built my present server and it worked very well for several years then stopped working. I just built another incredible pbx server and "simply plugged in" my e-mail address as before, but unfortunately it does not work either. However, I followed all of the instructions to the letter.

I'm just here looking for help and I'm finding that others are having the exact same problems that I am now having. If someone can tell me what I need to do to determine which mail program is running on my incredible pbx server, I will gladly do that and report back. Below is the status information for one of the servers:
┌────────────────────────SYSTEM INFORMATION───────────────────────────┐
│ Asterisk = ONLINE | Dahdi = ONLINE | MySQL = ONLINE │
│ SSH = ONLINE | Apache = ONLINE | Iptables = ONLINE │
│ Fail2ban = ONLINE | Internet = ONLINE | Ip6Tables = ONLINE │
│ Disk Free = ADEQUATE| Mem Free = ADEQUATE| NTPD = ONLINE │
│ SendMail = ONLINE | Samba = OFFLINE | Webmin = ONLINE │
│ Ethernet0 = ONLINE | Ethernet1 = N/A | Wlan0 = N/A │
│ │
│ PIAF Installed Version = 2.0.6.2 under *HARDWARE* │
│ FreePBX Version = 2.9.0.14 │
│ Running Asterisk Version = 1.8.8.0 │
│ Asterisk Source Version = 1.8.8.0 │
│ Dahdi Source Version = 2.6.0+2.6.0 │
│ Libpri Source Version = 1.4.12 │
│ IP Address = XX.XX.XXX.XXX on eth0 │
│ Operating System = CentOS release 6.2 (Final) │
│ Kernel Version = 2.6.32-220.2.1.el6.i686 - 32 Bit │
│ Incredible PBX 3 Version = 3.0.5 │
└─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘



This is the status information from the beaglebone black incredible pbx that I put together this past weekend. It does not send e-mail messages either...

Incredible PBX 4.11.4 for RasPBX

Asterisk: UP Apache: UP MySQL: UP
EximSMTP: UP IPtables: UP SSH: UP
LAN Eth0: UP WLan0: DN SAMBA: UP

RAM: 78700 BeagleBone Black Disk: 13G

Asterisk 11.13.0 FreePBX
2.11.0.34

Private IP:

Public IP:

System Time: Fri Dec 5 23:50:19 EST 2014

Any help is greatly appreciated.

Thanks,
Don

 

[dandy_don]

I just checked... My domain is not listed with SpamHaus, so I don't think I'm being blocked as spam.