Mails in spool for 22 days

Question asked by keith dovale - 3/19/2015 at 8:59 AM

Unanswered

how is this possible I have seen a few of these in the past, the mail spool is working fine, ie mails coming in and out, other mails go through the retry periods and be bounced, and then there is an elusive mail that sits in the queues and doesent get bounced or returned. I have just come in on one of my other servers where I had one indicating 22days in queue. Like an idiot i deleted it.

I will keep the next one and get more info from the logs, but how is this possible is anyone else seen this..

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Employee Replied

3/19/2015 at 12:09 PM

Employee Post

Keith, was this a quarantined message by chance? A quarantined message will stay in the spool. You have the option to specify how long the message stays--15 or 30 days. If it you have it set to 30 days and the message was quarantined, it makes sense that you saw in the spool for 22 days.

keith dovale Replied

3/25/2015 at 3:20 AM

Hi,

No these are NOT quarantined emails. I found 30 today, we use a SM server as an outgoing delivery server, and 30 of these mails were sitting in the queues, this was sent out by our bulk mail system for delivery, it is sitting with 1 retry attempt but been in the queues for 13d 19Hrs, the others are not even retried and are in the queues for 14 days. I looked in the log files, the mail tried to deliver timed out, retired got to tls negotiation and then nothing further for 14 days..

If you force them to retry or deliver, nothing happens they stay in the queues

Retry is set to 5, 5, 5, 15, 30, 30, 60, 60, 120, 120

header file says

Written
lists@xxxxx.co.za
cue@adinet.com.uy
retry: 1;03/11/2015 15:46:34
auth: bounce@xxxxxxxxxx.co.za
creationdate: 03/11/2015 15:21:09
priorityDetermined: True
footerAdded: True
containsLocalDeliveries: False

Opened mail in spool

Return-Path: <lists@xxxx.co.za>
Received: from xxx.xxxxxxxxxxx.co.za ([xxx.xx.xx.xx]) by xxxxx.xxxxxxxxx.co.za with Microsoft SMTPSVC(7.5.7601.17514);
	 Wed, 11 Mar 2015 15:21:07 +0200
To: cue@adinet.com.uy
Subject: sssssssssss
Message-ID: <4ffe97ded61bef14ed91ebe4345c2b46@xxxx.xxxxxxxxxx.co.za>
Return-Path: lists@xxxx.co.za
Date: Wed, 11 Mar 2015 15:20:02 +0200
From: "xxxxxx" <info@xxxxxxxx.co.za>
Reply-To: info@xxxxxxxxx.co.za
MIME-Version: 1.0
X-Mailer-LID: xxxxx
List-Unsubscribe: <http://xxx.xxxxxxxx.co.za/unsubscribe.php?M=xxxxxxx&C=2b4389972ea00deabf351a468c583f6d&L=xxx&N=xxx>
X-Mailer-RecptId: 23458729
X-Mailer-SID: xxxx
X-Mailer-Sdr: xxxx
X-Mailer-Sent-By: xxxx
Content-Type: multipart/alternative; charset="UTF-8"; boundary="b1_1a5a3166f7fe1c3fb2f5fed1c1b879ad"
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit
X-OriginalArrivalTime: 11 Mar 2015 13:21:07.0285 (UTC) FILETIME=[3B8FE050:01D05BFE]

Steve Reid Replied

3/25/2015 at 5:11 AM

Sounds like something else is holding onto them, have you excluded the spool from your AV?

keith dovale Replied

5/12/2015 at 5:54 AM

Hi Yes, no av holding them, I have foung this on the latest version of 13 as well, same issue retrys is 36hrs, mail in queue for 4 days.

CLEBER SAAD Replied

7/8/2015 at 2:49 PM

This is a BUG in SM in all versions. I have the versions SM 11, 12, 13 running in our environment and sometimes SM forget the mail in the SPOOL. The way to solve that it's stop/start Mailservice.exe

Without AV in the machine and AntiSpam disabled (because we use a incoming gateway)

CLEBER SAAD Replied

10/7/2015 at 9:44 PM

Using the latest version 14.2.x have the same bug.

Some messages still in the spool folders more than 4 days (that is the limit of ours spool process).

To solve that only restaring the SM. No AV and No Antispam Filter for outbound.

If I search at the LOG files have the initiate communication for that message(s) and after that missed another retry.

CLEBER SAAD Replied

1/28/2016 at 5:30 PM

I think that it's a BUG of SM. I'm using the version 14.2.5177 and I have 4 messages with the same case. Stay in the queue for 7 days. The retry it's only for 1 day to make the delivery and return back to the sender.

The only solution it's to restart SM every day to get the QUEUE again and make the delivery.

With the version 11.x I don't remeber this BUG.

I'm very frustrated with SM with no get more information about that in the forum. In our case there is no AV in the server (only clamav but it's disabled because all domains have a AV+AS before in another server)

There is no quarentine configured

Tina Cline Replied

2/5/2018 at 1:01 PM

Opening this back up as it is happening with our version as well: 15.5.6222

Suddenly you will find an email that says 5days in spool. Perhaps 2 emails.

The only way I have found around it is to take the eml and hdr out of the spool, open up the hdr and remove all lines after the To and From email addresses, rename both files to something different (example, if the files are x62252.hdr and x62252.eml, rename them to 123456.hdr and 123456.eml) now put them back in spool and they go immediately.

Happens to one or two emails every other week. .... very strange

No AV and it is not in the Quarantine tab, but the spool tab.

Any ideas?

Employee Replied

2/6/2018 at 8:40 AM

Employee Post

Tina, if you check the messages in the spool then gather the EML file name, can you review the delivery log to see if an attempt to deliver ever happened ?

You can search through the delivery log for the last 5 digits of the EML file name to return the specific delivery session for that message. Are you seeing any odd entries or exceptions taking place ?

Tina Cline Replied

2/6/2018 at 9:45 AM

Oddly enough, it looks like it went through on the SMTP logs, but the email is non-existent on the Delivery Logs...??? The sender sent 2 emails to this same recipient 1.5 hours apart. Both emails show in the SMTP log, but only one shows in the Delivery email (the good one). There is no sign of the stuck email ever making it through the delivery process.

Employee Replied

2/6/2018 at 10:37 AM

Employee Post

Tina, that is a bit worrying that it's missing from the delivery log. Do you have any spam checks that leverage the Proc folder within the spool ? Typically when an item is successfully delivered via SMTP, it is then placed immediately within the spool and you should see a reference to starting delivery.

Since this is missing you may want to check the following:
If you're using the spool Proc folder or Declude, navigate to the Proc folder (C:\SmarterMail\Spool\Proc) and see if there are any orphaned e-mail items here. If there are, you can drag and drop them to the spool for delivery assuming the HDR and EML files remain intact.

Have any third party AntiVirus or AntiMalware scanners picked up the message from the Spool or Proc folder ?

If the answer is no to both of these items I would definitely suggest opening a support ticket with us so we can work with you to troubleshoot further directly on the server.

Tina Cline Replied

3/9/2018 at 7:06 AM

Wanted to provide an update. It is discovered that it is happening when sending to only one particular domain. (A .edu domain of all places) Very strange, and I get varying results when looking up its DNS and check its SMTP connections suggesting that there are issues with their server and bad timeouts. Just still bothers me that SM records no interaction when attempting to send. Makes me think it is a DNS call timeout.

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