Root notifications not delivered, other emails work fine

maestroc

• October 23, 2025 23:20

I am not receiving root notifications such as LFD login notifications, backup completion emails, quota notifications, etc.  I have looked at:

https://support.cpanel.net/hc/en-us/articles/360050516454-Root-email-notifications-not-being-delivered

and

https://support.cpanel.net/hc/en-us/community/posts/19622917758231-Why-didn-t-my-email-get-delivered-or-where-did-my-email-go

and have not found anything different than on the other three servers I have that all deliver properly. 

WHM Email Deliverability shows all is good and I have exim on port 26 enabled in Service Manager as well as opened in the firewall.

When I look in the mail queue manager I see lots of frozen notification emails with the recipient root@ext.mydomain.com 

I fed all this info into chatgpt just to get ideas and it told me to check my /etc/aliases file.  At the end of this file it says:

# Person who should get root's mail
#root: marc

I'm guessing this is the default?  I've never had to set this on any other WHM installation I've had so I'm confused here.  Do I just change marc to my admin email and uncomment it?  Or is there something else I need to do?

 

• 

  ffeingol

  • October 24, 2025 02:36

  Log into WHM and go to "Edit System Mail Preferences".  You can then set where you want cPanel, nobody and root's mail to go to.

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• 

  quietFinn

  • October 24, 2025 10:45

  The address where root emails are forwarded to is in:
  /root/.forward

   

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• 

  maestroc

  • October 24, 2025 12:06

  I checked Edit System Mail Preferences and it is set the same way as another server that sends root emails normally.  the cpanel and root lines are set to the correct address.  The nobody line is set to root.

  As for the   .forward file it also has the correct address in it.

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• 

  William Del Piero cPanel Staff

  • October 24, 2025 13:18

  Hi,

   

  Since the root contact email appears to be configured correctly, the issue is likely related to email delivery. I recommend reviewing the Exim log located at /var/log/exim_mainlog to check for any entries related to the notification emails. This should help identify if there are any errors preventing delivery.

   

   

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