Joined Mar 2023
L5: Journeyman
Forum Thread
Missing Deal Alert emails: Proof your server isn't sending them
February 25, 2024 at
05:40 PM
They say you can't prove a negative, but you can prove there's a hole where there shouldn't be one, so I'm going to try anyway.
I've noticed that sometimes I just don't get my deal alert emails. It's random and I'm not sure how often it happens, but I am pretty sure it's been happening for a long time now.
I've looked into issues like this before where I found an item that almost certainly should have hit one of my alerts, and it was on the front page, but I couldn't even find the alert listed on the website under my deal alerts history.
Today I found a good example.
In this particular case, I see the alert on the website under my Deal Alerts history, but I never got an alert email.
It's notable that I received emails for other deals just before and after this deal.
This is the deal:
https://slickdeals.net/f/17315620-energizer-aa-ultimate-lithium-batteries-4-pack-7-12-or-less-with-amazon-s-s-6-68?p=169463440
If we look at my Deal Alert history, it's listed:
I run my own email server. I've been doing this for... a long time.
My logs show exactly what I would expect for a message that was never sent. It's not there. The message before it is there. The message after it is there, but there's a hole where your mail server never tried to transmit this message to mine.
Here's my mail server logs for the relevant messages, associated with the message which generated them. These have been anonymized, but none of that info was really important anyway. The only useful info here is the sending IPs, which probably isn't that interesting either.
The mail server does some additional spam and anti virus processing, but that's all logged too, and irrelevant since that kind of processing happens after the message comes in. It never came in at all.
I've noticed that sometimes I just don't get my deal alert emails. It's random and I'm not sure how often it happens, but I am pretty sure it's been happening for a long time now.
I've looked into issues like this before where I found an item that almost certainly should have hit one of my alerts, and it was on the front page, but I couldn't even find the alert listed on the website under my deal alerts history.
Today I found a good example.
In this particular case, I see the alert on the website under my Deal Alerts history, but I never got an alert email.
It's notable that I received emails for other deals just before and after this deal.
This is the deal:
https://slickdeals.net/f/17315620-energizer-aa-ultimate-lithium-batteries-4-pack-7-12-or-less-with-amazon-s-s-6-68?p=169463440
If we look at my Deal Alert history, it's listed:
Code:
Legion Pro 7 G8: 16" QHD+ IPS, Ryzen 9 7945HX, RTX 4090, 32GB DDR5, 512GB Gen4 SSD, Win11H @ $2476 + F/S Posted 02/25/2024 08:14:02am by Suryasis in Hot Deals be quiet! Pure Rock Slim 2 92mm 130W TDP PWM CPU Air Cooler Posted 02/25/2024 08:22:36am by sv650touring in Deal Talk 4-Count Energizer Ultimate Lithium AA Batteries Posted 02/25/2024 07:10:56am by fis in Hot Deals Baratza Sette 270 Conical Burr Coffee Grinder $327.83 Posted 02/25/2024 11:26:01am by Upperd in Deal Talk
My logs show exactly what I would expect for a message that was never sent. It's not there. The message before it is there. The message after it is there, but there's a hole where your mail server never tried to transmit this message to mine.
Here's my mail server logs for the relevant messages, associated with the message which generated them. These have been anonymized, but none of that info was really important anyway. The only useful info here is the sending IPs, which probably isn't that interesting either.
Code:
Subject: Slickdeals: Baratza Sette 270 Conical Burr Coffee Grinder $327.83 Feb 25 06:31:38 mailserver maild[29198]: newmsg,id=000000000009AF5C.0000000065DB4F49.00007703: dns; o165.da.slickdeals.net (o165.da.slickdeals.net [::ffff:149.72.151.146]) Feb 25 06:31:38 mailserver maild[29198]: started,id=000000000009AF5C.0000000065DB4F49.00007703,from=,module=local,host=username!!1002!1002!/home/username!!,addr= Feb 25 06:31:40 mailserver maillocal[30469]: id=000000000009AF5C.0000000065DB4F49.00007703,from=,addr=,size=127820,success: Message delivered. Subject: Slickdeals: Legion Pro 7 G8: 16" QHD+ IPS, Ryzen 9 7945HX, RTX 4090, 32GB DDR5, 512GB Gen4 SSD, Win11H @ $2476 + F/S Feb 25 06:41:18 mailserver maild[29198]: newmsg,id=000000000009AF72.0000000065DB518E.00007960: dns; o163.da.slickdeals.net (o163.da.slickdeals.net [::ffff:149.72.151.14]) Feb 25 06:41:18 mailserver maild[29198]: started,id=000000000009AF72.0000000065DB518E.00007960,from=,module=local,host=username!!1002!1002!/home/username!!,addr= Feb 25 06:41:20 mailserver maillocal[31074]: id=000000000009AF72.0000000065DB518E.00007960,from=,addr=,size=129045,success: Message delivered. Subject: Slickdeals: be quiet! Pure Rock Slim 2 CPU Air Cooler $9 shipped Feb 25 06:41:22 mailserver maild[29198]: newmsg,id=000000000009AF72.0000000065DB5191.00007982: dns; o167.da.slickdeals.net (o167.da.slickdeals.net [::ffff:149.72.151.152]) Feb 25 06:41:22 mailserver maild[29198]: started,id=000000000009AF72.0000000065DB5191.00007982,from=,module=local,host=username!!1002!1002!/home/username!!,addr= Feb 25 06:41:24 mailserver maillocal[31108]: id=000000000009AF72.0000000065DB5191.00007982,from=,addr=,size=128761,success: Message delivered.
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11 Comments
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what are the settings for the specific alert that triggered for the batteries? a change was made in recent months such that deal alert pms do not also send an email anymore. is it possible that that one doesn't have "email" as one of the notification methods?
what are the settings for the specific alert that triggered for the batteries? a change was made in recent months such that deal alert pms do not also send an email anymore. is it possible that that one doesn't have "email" as one of the notification methods?
Also, I just looked at my "Your Deal Alert Matches" list and I'm missing 7 out of 12 of my last alerts! This issue is way more serious than I thought it was.
By the time the deal alert "match" process ran (e.g. the process that checks what deals match what deal alerts) this particular deal had already gone passed the "2+" threshold and did not trigger that 2+ deal alert, but triggered subsequent deal alert vote leves (3+, 4+, etc).
The match process can take a few minutes to run+restart, so in that few minutes the deal votes went up by enough votes to no longer be 2+
I can see if I can verify that tomorrow, but it's the most logical reason
Also, I just looked at my "Your Deal Alert Matches" list and I'm missing 7 out of 12 of my last alerts! This issue is way more serious than I thought it was.
By the time the deal alert "match" process ran (e.g. the process that checks what deals match what deal alerts) this particular deal had already gone passed the "2+" threshold and did not trigger that 2+ deal alert, but triggered subsequent deal alert vote leves (3+, 4+, etc).
The match process can take a few minutes to run+restart, so in that few minutes the deal votes went up by enough votes to no longer be 2+
I can see if I can verify that tomorrow, but it's the most logical reason
Also surely someone knows the difference between >= and ==, right?
> journalctl -S "-1 days" -u mailserver.service | egrep -o "149\.72\.151\.[0-9]+" | sort | uniq
149.72.151.124
149.72.151.129
149.72.151.136
149.72.151.138
149.72.151.139
149.72.151.14
149.72.151.141
149.72.151.146
149.72.151.151
149.72.151.152
Let your sysadmin know to feel free to spam my mail address or do testing. I own the domain and the box.
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Let your sysadmin know to feel free to spam my mail address or do testing. I own the domain and the box.
I will keep you updated
Let your sysadmin know to feel free to spam my mail address or do testing. I own the domain and the box.