PayPal transaction data missing suddenly

[split63]

We have made no store config changes. We are using PHP, not SMTPAUTH. The text next to this setting reads "Servers running on Windows and MacOS should change this setting to SMTP." We are on a linux server.

We have spoken to Godaddy (yes, damn Godaddy), they claim they see nothing unusual. However, they do claim that our hosting account affords 1000 sent emails each day. They also claim that we reach that limit early in the day. Yet, we estimate that we use less than 100 emails. Also, when I had them on the phone they claimed I had reached my limit...so as a test, I sent an email from our hosting account. It was received at a Gmail account with no issue. I'm not convinced they know what they are talking about....But I am convinced that there is some sort of email issue and somehow it appears tied to the missing transaction data. Then again, it could be that the transactions don't fully complete on the Zen side so an email is never sent.

Godadday claims they can offer no insight into the emails, their source, if they sent all at once or over time, and they claim they can not capture any of the emails. I have since escalated this potential issue with godaddy management.
It does make sense that it is a server issues since the site had not changed when the issue began.

I have those logs ziped and ready to send you. Please PM your email address.

[DrByte]

Using SMTPAUTH sends your emails as authenticated messages, instead of as anonymous messages. It could be that you're hitting thresholds for anonymous messages. Or maybe that's not it at all.

But, sending emails as authenticated messages always gives you better performance as far as getting past spam filters is concerned, so is always a better choice.
(The only reason the help text mentions Windows/Mac is because on those platforms they MUST use smtp methods instead of bothering with a generic PHP choice.)

[split63]

Is it simply a matter of changing that one parameter from PHP to smtpauth?

I sent you the log files.

This business of reaching the email limits....I not a believer. They claim that the limit is reset daily. Yet the transactions with missing data occur at any time of the day. For example, all transactions might be great until Noon, then for several hours all transactions will be missing data. But later in the evening, say 5 pm, it will start working again. We certainly have not had our limit reset by evening. Its so random. The missing data transaction can occur any time of the day and start working any time of the day

[DrByte]

The log files reveal nothing other than that the activities sent to PayPal are working correctly.

So, it comes back to the operation on your site.
If emails are failing and causing a fatal error that aborts PHP execution, then anything after that email failure is not going to work, which could include any of the symptoms you've mentioned.
Or it could be custom code on your site. But unless someone has changed code in the window when this started happening, it's likely that it's something external ... which then brings us back to this email issue possibly.

[split63]

Ok, I will continue to pursue the email possibility through Godaddy.
Thanks for looking through the logs.

[split63]

DrByte,

Those Curl logs keep coming even though we have Debug set to off. I have tried turning it back on and then off again, but it had no effect.

[split63]

It has nothing to do with emails. But if you're hitting email thresholds then you might have other problems going on with rogue activity on your server. http://www.zen-cart.com/wiki/index.p...ing_From_Hacks

The problem appears to be that a forum on our site was being externally attacked. Each day hundreds of forum accounts were created. Each time an account was created an email was generated. This caused our site's allotted daily emails to be exhausted and/or the number that can be sent per hour to be exceeded. This would cause Zen to not be able to send php mail and this would prevent Zen from logging the transaction data. Since disabling the forum, our daily emails are very low and we have had not problems with Zen

[DrByte]

Thanks for the follow-up and for explaining where the source of the external problem was located.