Letting support access my ACP

[Quiet Anders]

I'm having some problems with my board. All of a sudden all e-mails sent from the board (welcome mails, new post notifications etc.) get bounced. To me it's obviously a mailserver problem on the part of my web host, but they think it may be a problem with my board configuration. Now they want to go in and "trouble shoot" my ACP and are asking for my username and PW. I'm just a tad little bit weary about doing that. Would you let them in?

 

[FansofRealityTV]

Change your password to something temporary, give them access, and change it back when you're done. Your host support should be trustworthy. If they're not, I'd be second-guessing my decision to stick with them.

 

[Dawg]

Send out a test email to yourself.

Give them the data: ie time and user sent to,

Have them review their email logs.

The Vbulletin only uses phpmail function to send email, there should be no configuration on the board itself.

I would not give them the access ..
if they absolutely insist, back up your db, then create a new user for them.
once they are done .. restore the backup.

 

[Quiet Anders]

Your host support should be trustworthy.

I don't question their trustworthyness, but I am afraid they might mess something up unintentionally. If it comes to it I guess I'll do what Dawg says; back up everything and create a temporary user w/admin privileges.

 

[Wayne Luke]

There is one setting that might help if you are using vBulletin 3.0. Go into the vBulletin Options under "Server Settings and Optimization Options" and set the option for "Use -f parameter" to Yes.

 

[Quiet Anders]

There is one setting that might help if you are using vBulletin 3.0. Go into the vBulletin Options under "Server Settings and Optimization Options" and set the option for "Use -f parameter" to Yes.

Wayne, would that possibly have anything to do with this e-mail I got from my host support?

In an effort to keep the best performance for our mailing system we require anyone using the php "mail()" function to include a valid local email address for the "From:" address.

If you do not have a "From:" header in your code you will need to modify your code to conform to this policy. For example,

mail("email-mailing-to@their-domain.com", "Email Subject Line", "Content of the email", "From: my-name@my-domain-at-inmotion.com");

If you do not have the From: header the mail will be accepted from your code but will then be bounced to us

 

[Kathy]

It sounds like the servers at your datacenter have been set to bounce/delete all email going out of the servers which don't have "FROM" in the email header to be bounced. This is to curtail any spammers within their datacenter from sending out email.

I'm assuming you have a FROM email address set up in your vb admin controls?

 

[Quiet Anders]

Options > Site Name/URL/Contact Details > Webmaster's e-mail is set to admin@loudmouthforums.org (and I know it works!). Is there somewhere else in ACP to input a FROM address that I have overlooked? The only help (so far) that I have gotten from vB is a suggestion to upgrade to Gold (from RC4) "to see if it fixes the problem".

 

[Hunter]

If you are on RC4, you should update to Gold regardless of this "problem". If for some reason that doesn't fix the problem and you need to give them access to your admin cp then I would create an entirely different username for them and give them access through that name to the admin cp. There is no way in hell, I would want them on my username as they would be able to see my private forums and view/prune my admin cp log(via CP). If you do give them access, as soon as they are through I would check your admin cp logs just to make sure they didn't mess with anything. Accidents happen, this is just a way to play it safe.

 

[Wayne Luke]

Wayne, would that possibly have anything to do with this e-mail I got from my host support?

It would have everything to do with that email. Since PHP runs as Nobody without that flag often the from address is set to nobody@domain.com. With the flag it would be set as the email you entered.

Set the option that I previously set and use the contact form to send yourself some emails to see if they bounce.