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Level 1

1 points

Mail-POP accounts go offline-can not get back online - error on port 110

I have Mail.app set to check 4 different POP accounts. Suddenly Mail.app apparently had difficulty checking two of the accounts, and the dreaded exclamation point in a circle icon has appeared next to those two accounts. Clicking on that icon brings up the dialog box "Unable to Receive Mail. There may be a problem with the mail server or network. Check the settings for account “account name” or try again. The server error encountered was: The server “mail.domainname.com” cannot be contacted on port 110." Along with a button to "Take All Accounts Online".

Clicking this button makes no change in the accounts.
Clicking on each account individually and attempting to get email does nothing.
Clicking on each account individually and attempting to take them online does nothing, because the popup menu actually offers an option to "take account OFFLINE", although the account is in fact offline and not working.

Webmail to those accounts works fine.
Entourage to those accounts on another computer works fine.

2GHz Intel Core Duo iMac, Mac OS X (10.5)

Posted on Oct 28, 2007 10:09 AM

26 replies

pp qq

Level 1

0 points

Dec 9, 2007 7:55 AM in response to Dan Jahn

I tried this and its works:

Expand the Inbox and see the list of the accounts. The one offline will be inactive. Click offline account and click "Go Online" under MailBox menu.

Good luck!

Dr_Madd

Level 1

0 points

Dec 9, 2007 4:14 PM in response to Dave Cook

Thanks for the awesome info. My mail, all 4 accounts, was doing this ALL the time. I pretty much had enough and was looking for other mail options when I came across this fix. Works perfect, has not timed out since. I was pretty suprised to see there is no place to set timeout limits. But, I don't care now, its fixed!

Thanks

jimi95

Level 1

0 points

Dec 15, 2007 6:58 AM in response to Dan Jahn

I struggled with this issue. Changing the DNS did nothing. Flushing the DNS cache did nothing. I finally solved it by loofing in Preferences/Accounts/Advanced where the authentication method had been changed to "Authenticated POP" (APOP). I changed it back to "password" and normal service was resumed.

I hope this helps others.

BG

Neddog

Level 1

4 points

Jan 4, 2008 8:01 PM in response to Dan Jahn

I have experienced the same problem. I can't tell you WHY it happens, but I can tell you what fixes it (at least for me). Replace the NAME of your incoming mail server with the IP address of your incoming mail server.

If you don't know how to do that, try this. Get the address of your mail server (if you don't know, check your account info in Mail). Launch Network Utility and click on the Lookup Tab. Type in the name of your mail server, and click lookup. Within the info you get back, you'll see your IP address.

This does reinforce the idea that this is somehow DNS related.

Good Luck!

Jan 6, 2008 5:22 AM in response to Dan Jahn

Well here's another vote for the cache flush (sudo dscacheutil -flushcache) and in this case, it worked for IMAP accounts rather than POP.

I had 5 IMAP accounts all "offline" and even selecting "take account online" manually, one by one did nothing. Issued the command and started Mail back up and voila, completely resolved. First time I had seen this behavior in Mail.

Thanks Dan!

Jan 20, 2008 9:47 AM in response to Neddog

i tried this, it didn't work.

very frustrating, apple please fix this. i don't know if my problem is exactly the same. i had mail forget my password and flipflop my pop account to Apop. i restored the settings but now it won't connect. it keeps saying stuff about not trusting a security certificate. i click on 'always trust' and 'connect now', but it never works.

Jan 20, 2008 9:16 PM in response to Dan Jahn

The

Terminal: sudo dscacheutil -flushcache

solution just worked for me (so far...)
I will update if any further problems or points of interest occur.

mickek

Level 1

10 points

Jan 20, 2008 11:13 PM in response to jimi95

jimi95 and all others:
Report to this thread:

http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=1348466&tstart=50

Michael

imac007

Level 3

845 points

Jan 21, 2008 12:30 AM in response to Dan Jahn

I see a lot of posting here about DNS.
I have set my own mail up without DNS.
I opened Network Utility and pinged my mail servers.
It brings up the numeric address for my mail servers.
I entered those numbers in the fields for my mail servers.
This does not work if you are using a large web-based e-mail provider like gmail since they really don't have a singular server that they use.
It works in some scenarios where there is a timed out error message.
It suggests to me that the isp DNS server might be overloaded and that by the time it does the lookup and relays the transmission information and the connection is redirected that enough time elapses that an internal clock in the process reaches a threshold and generates a timed out error.

Dedo

Level 2

214 points

Feb 11, 2008 3:35 PM in response to imac007

Thanks, Mac, I've never used the Network Utility (the terminal command hadn't helped).

I did as you suggested and pinged them; I have a local ISP. I got different numerics than I was using so I entered the new ones first and then the ones they gave me. I still couldn't connect but found that the SSl Port # had changed. When I reset it, the mail began to work again.

The annoying thing is that the prefs seem to reset themselves frequently and then tells me my selected server is offline. We'll see how long this holds!

Dedo

Level 2

214 points

Feb 12, 2008 1:33 PM in response to Dedo

I spoke with my ISP this morning and we reset all my mail preferences. Hopefully, that will fix the continual 'off-line' response I was getting when trying to send mail.

They said the Ping result I got yesterday from my use of Network Utility gave me the address of the server I pinged but not the DNS address they want me to use in my System Preference Network DNS settings.

It's working fine again. I'll wait to see if any 'mysterious' changes take place in the prefs. 🙂

Mail-POP accounts go offline-can not get back online - error on port 110