iPad 6th gen does not receive mail from imap server

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iPad 6th gen does not receive mail from imap server

I have this unusual problem on my new iPad 6th gen. I cannot receive mail from my imap server (no ssl). The unusual part is that when first configuring the mail account settings they verify correctly and the existing mail and folder structure appear in the mail client however from this point forward no mail is fetched. I did change the fetch settings from automatic to every 15 minutes.

Sometimes swiping down on the inbox list will just appear do nothing, at other times it reports an error that it cannot connect to the server.

I have tested and compared the settings to my Windows 10 machine, my iPhone 5 and an iPad gen 3. All other clients work as expected and the settings are identical.

I have removed my account and re-instated it 3 times, each time an initial download of mail and folders occurs and it's up to date but does not fetch mail from this point forward.

I also tested by loading a telnet client on my iPad and could "talk" to the mail server without any issues.

iPad (6th gen) WiFi

Posted on Aug 23, 2019 1:47 AM

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Answer 1

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muz59 Author

Level 1

4 points

Aug 26, 2019 3:45 AM in response to muz59

So I have resolved this issue.

Even though I configured the imap and smtp servers with an ip address the mail client still parsed the login host (user@host) and used the host name to resolve the ip address. As the new ipad was using a dhcp server supplied by the internet service provider’s modem the dns could not be resolved. Setting the ipad dns entires to use a local dns server that has a reverse lookup for the internal imap server resolved the issue.

So, in summary the initial imap sync used the supplied ip address (mail account settings) however the actual client wanted to resolve the host via the user login name host which failed due to the dhcp server not being able to serve a user specified dns server.

Whats that you say, why user@host for authentication? Active directory authentication is the answer.

Whew! All is good in the email world, however is this a defect or not?

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Answer 2

muz59 Author

Level 1

4 points

Aug 23, 2019 9:42 PM in response to QuickPost

So it works on every device including iPad gen 3, iPhone 5, iPhone 6, iMac, Windows 10 except on an iPad 6th gen. But it does the initial population ok.

And testing with raw imap protocol commands works fine from the iPad 7th gen.

And you blame the server when 5 other different clients don't have issues.

That's a narrow vision but thanks for your comments.

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