Smartermail service failing ....

Question asked by Steve Gaston - 4/2/2024 at 11:56 PM

Answered

Anyone seen such issue lately. I think this issue first cropped up after we upgraded to the release candidate to do with .NET changes.

This is what happens, I either receive a phone call from a client or I spot it myself. The server the software is hosted in is running no problem, all resources on the server are running no problems.

However Smartermail is out of action. When trying to access the GUI an error is thrown that the resource is not available. I have to restart the Smartermail service and then it comes back online.

Looking at the server logs I see four event system messages appear shortly after the Smartermail service stops responding

Source: IIS-IISReset

"IIS stop command received from user NT AUTHORITY\SYSTEM"

I looked into the Smartermail logs but could not find anything that will assist me in tracking down the issue.

20 Replies

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Tim Uzzanti Replied

4/3/2024 at 7:41 AM

Employee Post

Sounds it might be more system related but we can take a look. Contact our support team and we help you diagnose.

Tim Uzzanti CEO SmarterTools Inc. www.smartertools.com

Steve Gaston Replied

4/3/2024 at 9:58 PM

Thank you Tim for reaching out.

Ive updated Smartermail to the latest release and it looks to have resolved the issue documented

https://portal.smartertools.com/community/a95866/the-page-cannot-be-displayed-because-an-internal-server-error-has-occurred_.aspx#144462

I am going to guess that the issue described in the the above link is associated with the .NET changes, so will wait to see if the new version of Smartermail has resolved the issue described in the thread

Thanks

Michael Replied

4/4/2024 at 9:34 PM

We're seeing issue where we install SmarterMail update. Installer popup says we'll need to restart after the update. Usually get 2 pop ups saying same. Click OK to both. Then says update successful. Then we restart the server. When server comes back the SmarterMail service is not started. We have to start it manually. It's been this way last 3 updates or so. Including update today. Going to dig around event viewer logs a bit and open a ticket.

Gabriele Maoret - SERSIS Replied

4/4/2024 at 11:35 PM

When we have to upgrade, we usually uninstall SmarterMail first, then reboot, then install the new build.

This seems to work flawless for us

Gabriele Maoret - Head of SysAdmins at SERSIS Currently manages 6 SmarterMail installations (1 in the cloud for SERSIS which provides services to a few hundred third-party email domains + 5 on-premise for customers who prefer to have their mail server in-house)

Sébastien Riccio Replied

4/5/2024 at 7:43 AM

That's a long time we did not try to upgrade SM without stopping it first and being sure it's stopped, per this I mean the mailservice.exe process MUST be gone from the process list running on the machine.

This because we noticed that when stopping the service it takes a few minutes before it's really gone, even that the service manager says it is stopped.

It might be that during an upgrade, the installer will stop the service and go on with the install as soon as the service manager returns the service in stopped state, when in reality it's not yet fully stopped.

As long as the process is running, it is locking the application files so the installer might want you to restart as it might not be able to overwrite some files during the upgrade.

It probably depends on how large your installation is though.

Sébastien Riccio System & Network Admin https://swisscenter.com

Jay Dubb Replied

4/6/2024 at 9:24 AM

+1 for what Sebastien said. It takes about 2 minutes on our server for the mailservice.exe process to disappear from Task Manager after stopping the service. The Services applet in Windows indicates the service has been stopped successfully, but in reality it continues running while it bleeds off connections and exits out of RAM.

In fact, we don't even reboot the server without manually stopping the SM process and waiting for mailservice.exe to disappear from Task Manager. We learned the hard way that rebooting while SM is still in memory corrupts files and we had a circumstance where several hundred email boxes failed to load after a reboot due to file corruption in each of the affected accounts.

Michael Replied

4/8/2024 at 11:23 AM

We're going to try a SmarterMail re-install tonight following guidance above of stopping service. Uninstalling. Then re-installing.

Today our server reboot due to issues at the data center. When it restarted, SmarterMail was stopped.

Kevin Delaney Replied

5/11/2024 at 11:19 AM

I am noticing the same thing. After updating smartermail for the last three updates, a manual service restart is required after reboot.

After the first reboot and service restart all is well. It is only happening on the first reboot after the update is completed.

Michael Replied

5/13/2024 at 8:16 PM

Right. When we update we get this pop up. Twice. Click ok. Get again. Click ok.

But when done, the installer says installed successfully. The services start up everything is great.

We then restart the server manually.

When restarting, the SmarterMail service is off - only on that first reboot. Subsequent reboots everything is OK.

Very odd.

It feels strange there aren't wider reports of this.

Tim Uzzanti Replied

5/14/2024 at 7:46 AM

Employee Post

In March, we had a few builds that had a bug where long standing connections were having a hard time being shut down and the SmarterMail service would take awhile to shut down. It was possible when upgrading that the new SmarterMail service being installed could be started while the previous one was still shutting down. This is no longer an issue and once you upgrade to the most recent builds and future upgrades will have no problems. We also included code to prevent multiple SmarterMail services from being able to be run at the same time.

Tim Uzzanti CEO SmarterTools Inc. www.smartertools.com

Kevin Delaney Replied

5/14/2024 at 8:08 AM

Hello,

Thats all well and good, but I updated over the weekend, and it is still happening.

SmarterMail Enterprise 100.0.8895.12619 (May 9, 2024)

It's not that big of a deal for our situation, and I suspect that is why it isn't being reported too much. I would imagine it is not every installation. There are probably some server factors involved.

Now that I am used to it, the server gets a double boot after updating.

No harm no foul. :)

Tim Uzzanti Replied

5/14/2024 at 9:15 AM

Employee Post Marked As Answer

The issue is related to the previous version you had installed. If it was one that had the delay in shutting down, it would impact your new install. But now that you have a version that doesn't have the delay, all should be good moving forward.

Tim Uzzanti CEO SmarterTools Inc. www.smartertools.com

Kevin Delaney Replied

5/14/2024 at 9:38 AM

Thanks ! Ill let you know on the next one. We update everytime there is an available update.

Fingers crossed. :)

Michael Replied

5/15/2024 at 10:54 PM

We're on the latest release. Sever restarted tonight for regular updates. When it came back up. Smarter Mail service was off. Not started.

But maybe this resolves after installing next build?

Michael Replied

5/16/2024 at 7:47 PM

Same issue persists when installing SmarterMail_8902

Tim Uzzanti Replied

5/17/2024 at 10:05 AM

Employee Post

You can try setting your SmarterMail service to delayed start or re-run the .Net framework installer. We are seeing corrupt .Net installations and believe it’s related to a Windows update. If you want to contact support we can help you out. It has nothing to do with the shutdown issue I brought up.

Tim Uzzanti CEO SmarterTools Inc. www.smartertools.com

Tony Scholz Replied

6/13/2024 at 10:13 AM

Employee Post

@Michael,

You mentioned that you were going to check out the event viewer logs. Did you find anything in there?

Tim mentioned adding a Delayed start, did you have a chance to try this and see if it has helped? Possible an issue with a service timeout when tryign to start? IF so you can try to increase the timing to see if this resolves the issue? ( https://serverfault.com/questions/622432/how-do-i-increase-windows-service-startup-timeout ).

looking forward to your results.

Tony

Tony Scholz System/Network Administrator SmarterTools Inc. www.smartertools.com

Curtis Kropar www.HawaiianHope.org Replied

6/14/2024 at 4:11 PM

Are any of you guys running plesk ? We had an issue when we were trying to upgrade and discovered that plesk was killing off the mail service. I had to upgrade plesk and then upgrade SM and then the issue went away.

www.HawaiianHope.org - Providing technology services to non profit organizations, low income families, homeless shelters, clean and sober houses and prisoner reentry programs. Since 2015, We have refurbished over 11,000 Computers !

Kevin Delaney Replied

8/4/2024 at 9:31 AM

I just installed the newest version, that updated .NET to 8.0. So the corrupt .NET installation should not be in the equation. (Well one would think anyways)

The server had to be restarted twice. Not even restarting the service helped.

I do not know what the issue is, but it remains.

In the big picture (For Us) it isnt an issue, just an extra restart.

If everyone is not having this issue, logic dictates it must be an environment issue,

But again, I don't have time to get in the weeds with it. It works, so no biggie.

Maybe when we go to production on the new version, it will sort itself out.

Tim Uzzanti Replied

8/5/2024 at 7:32 AM

Employee Post

We haven't had any reports of the SmarterMail service crashing for a long time. You are correct, there are times that .NET itself can be a little funky and needed to be re-installed. If you continue to have issues, please contact support and we would love to help out.

Tim Uzzanti CEO SmarterTools Inc. www.smartertools.com

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