Mail is killing the processes on my server with IMAP

Thank you for the advice.

I did not have the SSL box checked. I had tried that initially a few days ago and could not get anywhere so I deleted that and started over. I am using IMAP with port number 26 for both incoming and outgoing mail.

My .Mac accounts are using IMAP over 993 for incoming and the default is checked for STMP. Perhaps I should change the Hostgator account to these settings? Or, just delete the Hostgator account and reinstall it as POP3 account.

I'm also now receiving all my .Mac mail in my Apple Mail twice. So every email message is coming in two times. Not sure why since I've not changed any of the settings on those accounts. And, everything was up and running fine with Hostgator and .Mac accounts this morning and just about an hour ago, the Hostgator account stopped working (in & out) and the .Mac accounts started to deliver twice.

I don't get it! It is completely frustrating and Apple does not provide software product support. Not sure what to do...

Feeling helpless.

IMAP doesn't use Port 26. In this case, it uses Port 143, per the list I sent you from the Hostgator site. Incoming and outgoing ports are always (in my experience) different.

Only use the settings HostGator gives you. I only stopped doing the IMAP thing because of Apple Mail's using 4 different processes to send and receive mail and then not releasing those processes when done. Other than that, IMAP works with HostGator. Have you called them? You mention trying to talk to Apple, but not HostGator.

Hi Theresa,

Thank you for your help! Yes, I did call Hostgator and yes they were very helpful, answered right away. But, he was not familiar with Apple and couldn't really help me. He gave me some alternative settings to try and that actually made things worse.

I deleted the entire account out of the Apple mail interface. I am going to try to install it again. But first I'm going to write the cron job that kills the imap processes that Apple ties up. I saw this in an earlier post. Did you have any luck with that? What email interface are you using successfully on your Apple with a Hostgator account?

Thanks again! Robert

I'm using Apple Mail, which was the source of all the trouble in the first place.

When you delete the account from Apple Mail and go to put it back in, *make sure* you go slowly and read everything on the screen. Make sure you are setting up an IMAP account (there are two buttons near the top of your dialog box - POP3 and IMAP - click the IMAP one). After you've set everything up, go back into the advanced tab of the mail accounts preferences and make sure everything is as it should be. For the USER, you will want to put the whole email address. Apple Mail just puts the part in front of your @. You will want to authenticate with your password, but not with SSL.

IMAP does not use SMTP. For HostGator, just put mail.[yourdomainname].com (unless it's .net or whatever) for BOTH the incoming and outgoing mail servers.

If you still have problems, I will create an IMAP email account (it's been a couple of months since I did this, and I'm a designer, not a back-end person) in my Hostgator control panel, add it to Apple Mail, and make note of everything I do and the settings, and I'll respond here. Try the above first, though. Use the list I posted of the commonly used ports. Sort out what you are going to do - IMAP or POP3, and use the appropriate port numbers. You have POP and IMAP settings all mixed up.

It doesn't make sense to set up a cron job for IMAP if you're not using IMAP.

Try, try again...

Started anew and added a new IMAP email account into Mail.app. It does receive email sent to the email address, but it fails on sending emails out. So, now I'm half way there.

Here are what my settings look like

in "Account Information" tab:
Account Type: IMAP
Incoming Mail Server: mail.mydomainname.com -- but the actual one
User name: name@emailaddress.com -- but my real email address
Password: xxxxxxxx -- but my actual password
Outgoing Mail Server (SMTP): mail.mydomainname.com -- ditto above
Check in box: use only this server

in "Advanced" tab:
Enable this account is checked
Include when automatically checking for new mail is checked

IMAP Path Prefix is INBOX
Port is 143 (SSL is not checked)
Authentication: Password

in the "Advanced" tab of the Server List:
Use default ports (25, 465, 587) is selected
SSL is not checked
Authentication: Password
User name: (same as above)
Password: (same as above)

Mail is coming in now. But when I try to send mail, I get a failure that says:
"Cannot send message using the server mail.mydomainname.com:name@emailaddress.com"
"Connections to host mail.mydomainname.com on the default ports failed."

I tried running the Connection Doctor and it said it "Could not connect to this SMTP server. Check your network connection and that you enered the correct information in the Account preferences." So I did that and still nada!

Theresa, thank you so much for your help! What am I doing wrong?
Best, Robert

P.S. Do you use crowdspring?

Also, one more think I noticed and I don't know if this is usual:

Along the far left side of the Mail.app where the folders are:

Inbox below it has a new folder for my hostgator account.

Further down at the bottom of the folder list under RSS, there is another folder with my host gator account and when I click it open, there is a sent and a trash folder in there.

Not sure if this matters or is the usual set up but thought I'd mention in case.

Yeah, it'll do that...populate all kinds of folders in your mail program.

I'm setting something up on my system - to play.

Message was edited by: Theresa Mesa

Do not use the default ports. Your ISP will often use Port 25 and it doesn't like to share. Use Port 26.

Hope this works for you...

Brilliant! Port 26 did the trick! Thank you so much! Email is now coming and going again.

I also have the cron job running to killall imap every 15 minutes and I have my Mail.app set to check for new mail every 15 minutes.

I think I should be set.

Thanks again!

<Curtseying> My pleasure.

If you can stand it, why don't you have your mail check every half an hour or hour? You'll likely get more work done that way. 😉

Just going through my old topics and I came across this one.

After further review, it looks like Snow Leopard didn't do anything to remedy this at all, so I'm still using Thunderbird. At least Mozilla finally added in the ability to use the OS X Address Book which was the main reason I wanted to be able to use Mail.app so badly.

It would still be nice, however, if Apple could address this issue.

Yesterday I added a Mac Airbook to my network. Today when I was using the mail.app, there are two of the exact same email addressess in the "From" pop-up list. One of them works, and the other one causes an SMTP outgoing server failure error message. Does anybody out there know how I can edit the "From" pop-up email address selection list? I'm running about 4 email's in the mail app and one of the other accounts also has 2 entries of the exact same email address.

Thanks! robert

Anyone who tries to use Mail with any shared hosting provider seems to have this problem. Please Apple fix it, it's been long enough already.

Has anyone found any other work arounds beside the Cron Job?

Thanks -

D -

I've been reading through the thread as I too am hosting with Gator Hosting and having this issue with multiple users checking their mail on Apple Mail and kicking off multiple processes per account on the server.

Let me just ask, is this only an issue with IMAP setting? In other words, has anyone tried to set up the email accounts using POP3 and see if that helps. I know this isn't the end goal but was just curious if there was at least a work around now without having to leave Apple Mail and use Entourage. Thanks!