As many already know Lunarpages is upgrading all severs to run the same configuration across all of them.

These suggestions are only based on 14 hours of researching over a 100 forums from developers to users.

The Mac users and Thunderbird users seem to have the issues after the mail conversion.


The issue with Mac mail and Entourage is simply the mail format both work of off.

Mbox is the format used on Macs, in turn as support may have advised many on why the conversion has taken place. Mbox on a server perspective has caused many issues with emails corrupting and lock outs on email accounts. There are many other reported issues with the mail format across the Internet, which I left out intentionally due to a fact no need to list an 8-page essay on it.


What happens is when the conversion took place and you try to retrieve emails the initial connection is broken. Likely, from my own insight the variance in formats and essential server extensions programmed on Macs.

IMAP users for your Lunarpages email accounts. The resolution for this is simply remove the accounts in your email client and then re-add them.

POP users is a little more tricky, you would need to backup your email accounts which I will provide a nice detailed instruction on how email backups are done.

I would likely suggest the manual back up, but Mac support does provide both ways.

Mail preferences and messages
Your Mail accounts, rules, signatures, and Smart Mailboxes preference settings can easily be backed up. Tip: All Mail-related preference files should be backed up or restored as a group.
·   To back up:
Note: These steps back up Mail preferences, but do not back up Mail messages (emails), although you can do that with the .Mac Backup utility. See below if you want to manually back up Mail messages (mailboxes).
1.   Create a uniquely named folder on your desktop (or other favorite location). For example, you might call it "Mail Prefs Backups May_15_2005" (adding a date is a good idea).
2.   Quit Mail if it's running.
3.   In the Finder choose Home from the Go menu.
4.   Open the Library folder.
5.   Open the Preferences folder.
6.   Copy the "com.apple.mail.plist" file to the folder you made in step 1 by Option-dragging the file. Don't remove the original file from its current location (this file contains your Mail accounts information).
7.   Close the Preferences folder.
8.   Open the Mail folder.
9.   Copy the "MessageRules.plist" file to the folder you made in step 1 by Option-dragging the file (this file contains your Mail rules).
10.   Copy the "SmartMailboxes.plist" file to the folder you made in step 1 by Option-dragging the file (you guessed it, this file contains Smart Mailboxes information).
11.   Finally, copy the Signatures folder to the folder you made in step 1 by Option-dragging the folder. (Your custom signatures, if you use them, are stored here.)

·   To restore:
Move all copies of the files and folders from your uniquely named folder to the original locations from which they came, as listed above.
To manually back up Mail messages (emails)
You might wish to manually back up all your Mail messages from time-to-time. To back up entire mailboxes (where Mail stores messages), such as your Inbox, follow these steps:
1.   Quit Mail if it's open.
2.   From the Finder's Go menu, choose Home.
3.   Open the Library folder.
4.   Copy the folder "Mail" to your backup location, such as a different volume or burnable disc. Important: Do not remove the Mail folder from ~/Library. If you're backing up to the same volume, hold the Option key as you drag the folder to make a copy instead of moving it (a "+" cursor appears).
More of this can be found on Mac’s support page. Or you can refer to http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=301239

Once, the mail is backed up. Then remove and re-add and restore the mail files.

This sounds a lot to do for a Mac user but unfortunately, I have spent a total of 14 hours going over hundreds of forums and all result to this.

Hopefully, in future Mac OS releases they implement a more adaptable extension for these kinds of issues.

Thunderbird users:

You can simply remove and re-add the accounts, if you are using IMAP.

POP users, Back up your files first.

Here are URLs to read on how to do this.

http://email.about.com/od/mozillathunderbirdtips/qt/et_backup_prof.htm

http://mozbackup.jasnapaka.com/

http://kb.mozillazine.org/Profile_backup

I would advise to read each to find the one that best works for your OS.

Once, backed up remove the account. From the URLs provided each show how to restore the accounts and emails.



POP email users that are getting, duplicate email.

This one is very straight forward, Using POP email and saving messages on the server defeats the purpose for IMAP.

IMAP’s primary purpose is to retrieve emails without having to download them from the server. This means no need to save them to your computer.

You should either choose to download all messages to your local machine or to keep them on the server keep your setting as IMAP.

The issue for duplicate emails is a kind of looping bug with email clients. Really, there has not been any offers for a resolution for the fact that POP is only used to download all messages to your computer for viewing later or storing for later viewing.

IMAP again the sole purpose is to keep the messages on the server.

Lunarpages didn’t make this choice actually the developers of email frameworks and how it acts did.

Changes being made to servers and the internet are all decided by the developers of the frameworks we use day to day. So, we usually are having to conform to these changes.

I hope this is very helpful to understand or gain some insight to these issues. I also hope that this will continue to added on by other as well. As, more views are made the more insight is given to resolve an issue.

It goes with the philosophy, “Two heads are better than one”

Thanks to Mark Cale for his 14 hours of research. However, my experience indicates that the steps above will not solve the problem that I am having with IMAP, which may be affecting other users as well.

On the Lunarpages server my account is on, they now appear to allow a maximum of five cached connections to a mail server from any one IP address. This is new—in my case, the problems started from around Christmas 2007—and I believe reflects their moves to standardise settings across servers.

If you are using Thunderbird as your IMAP client, by default it opens five cached connections per mail account. This means that if you have more than one email account, it is going to report that it is unable to make a connection to your IMAP server. If you have five or fewer email accounts, you can solve this problem by clicking on the name of the email account in the left panel, clicking "View settings for this account", selecting the line "Server Settings", clicking on "Advanced", and changing the option "Maximum number of server connections to cache" to 1. (Macintosh instructions; process will be similar for Windows.) Note that this will still only allow a maximum of five accounts on one computer, or a maximum of two accounts synchronised between two computers, if they are on the same IP address (because 3x2=6, which is too many connections).

The same problem is experienced by users of Apple Mail. Apple Mail also uses multiple connections in order to provide a better experience for users. Unfortunately, there does not appear to be any way to limit the number of connections it makes. All solutions I have found involved increasing the number of simultaneous connections allowed by the server.

In my case, I have been told my Helpdesk ticket has been forwarded to the Server Admin Staff for review. In the meantime, I thought any others trying to figure out what is going on might find this helpful.

I just got a reply from my 3+ week support ticket on this IMAP issue - I was told the server was changed to allow for more simultaneous IMAP connections per IP address. I wasn't told how many it was increased to however. I would assume this happened across the board, but again I just know that things are working fine again on my accounts.