Email getting stuck in outbox

[bcarruthers]

Hi,

Scalix version: 11.2
Connector version: 11.1.0.46
OS: Fedora Core 5

Problem: Mail gets stuck in the outbox and the only way for it to send seems to be releasing and renewing the clients ip address manually using 'ipconfig'. Most of the time the email will still be in the outbox and will send when outlook is closed and the connector is cleaning up itself.

I previously thought this may be a DNS issue as seen at my post here
viewtopic.php?t=9908

I have been having these problems for quite some time now and our several clients are experiencing it more than once a day. This is becoming a producitivity issue for our business and we have a small business licensed edition of scalix.

Was going to upgrade to 11.3 but fedora core 5 is no longer supported so we have to plan a distro upgrade as well now...

Many thanks for any help or suggestions you can offer,
Brett

[les]

Hi,

Scalix version: 11.2
Connector version: 11.1.0.46
OS: Fedora Core 5

Problem: Mail gets stuck in the outbox and the only way for it to send seems to be releasing and renewing the clients ip address manually using 'ipconfig'. Most of the time the email will still be in the outbox and will send when outlook is closed and the connector is cleaning up itself.

I previously thought this may be a DNS issue as seen at my post here
viewtopic.php?t=9908

I have been having these problems for quite some time now and our several clients are experiencing it more than once a day. This is becoming a producitivity issue for our business and we have a small business licensed edition of scalix.

Was going to upgrade to 11.3 but fedora core 5 is no longer supported so we have to plan a distro upgrade as well now...

Many thanks for any help or suggestions you can offer,
Brett

What Antivirus solution are you using? try disabling its email integration feature and see if that fixes it. I know nod32, kaspersky and some others need to have email integration turned off to work successfully.

[bcarruthers]

I have found what seems to be a major problem which has been resolved.

Our sendmail.mc file did not have our domain in the 'LOCAL_DOMAIN' setting and I found we were getting continual local configuration errors for unknown users at our domain (which are 99.9% spam messages).

I have added our domain and stopped accepting unresolvable domains and so far no mail has been getting stuck in my outbox. I've give it a few days before I decide it fixed.

What I haven't mentioned is that we use Mailscanner+fprot to scan messages and filter spam.

Because sendmail didn't know our domain it was returning emails to the sender with a local configuration error message. 99% of this mail was spam and had un-resolvable domains which filled up the outgoing queue.

Now this issue had been fixed I can see the queue going down (messages seem to be trying for 5 days to send).

My best guess is that the load of all these outgoing messages may have been interferring with scalix. I did notice the CDA server was not running before I rebooted scalix/mailscanner/sendmail.

Thanks for your suggestions,
Brett

[les]

I have found what seems to be a major problem which has been resolved.

Our sendmail.mc file did not have our domain in the 'LOCAL_DOMAIN' setting and I found we were getting continual local configuration errors for unknown users at our domain (which are 99.9% spam messages).

I have added our domain and stopped accepting unresolvable domains and so far no mail has been getting stuck in my outbox. I've give it a few days before I decide it fixed.

What I haven't mentioned is that we use Mailscanner+fprot to scan messages and filter spam.

Because sendmail didn't know our domain it was returning emails to the sender with a local configuration error message. 99% of this mail was spam and had un-resolvable domains which filled up the outgoing queue.

Now this issue had been fixed I can see the queue going down (messages seem to be trying for 5 days to send).

My best guess is that the load of all these outgoing messages may have been interferring with scalix. I did notice the CDA server was not running before I rebooted scalix/mailscanner/sendmail.

Thanks for your suggestions,
Brett

In sendmail you need to have your domains listed in /etc/mail/local-host-names

Cant remember exactly why that is, search the forums for that explanation.

I never edit LOCAL_DOMAIN in sendmail.mc

CDA server is for ordering the global address book, so its not absolutely critical, and shouldn't break outlook sending, but should be reset to running mode.

[bcarruthers]

I already had both the hostname and hostname.domain as two lines in /etc/mail/local-host-names but I was still getting the local configuration error. Only changing the LOCAL_DOMAIN parameter worked and I found this advice elsewhere on sendmail forums. Of course I had to rebuild and restart sendmail after the change.

Cheers
Brett

[les]

I already had both the hostname and hostname.domain as two lines in /etc/mail/local-host-names but I was still getting the local configuration error. Only changing the LOCAL_DOMAIN parameter worked and I found this advice elsewhere on sendmail forums. Of course I had to rebuild and restart sendmail after the change.

Cheers
Brett

hmmm....while that has fixed your problem its odd because i never change those settings. So i'm curious as to whether that was the real fix or it was a workaround or something else.

Thus just to double check, and satisfy my curiosity ;)......

Here is what i change in sendmail.....

local-hostnames:
mydomain.com

(only add the domain name, not the hostname)

sendmail.mc:
dnl FEATURE(`accept_unresolvable_domains')dnl
dnl #
FEATURE(`relay_based_on_MX')dnl
dnl #

(Only change the above lines)

dnl # Also accept email sent to "localhost.localdomain" as local email.
dnl #
LOCAL_DOMAIN(`localhost.localdomain')dnl

(Never change the above line, buts thats what it always is)

and ofcourse i add spamassassin and clamav filtering options.

Other than that i change nothing else for sendmail.

How does your sendmail config differ?

[dwerthmu]

Is this a possible type error

Here is what i change in sendmail.....

local-hostnames:
mydomain.com

I think scalix installer makes a file called
local-host-names and places the scalix server name in the file.

I've not used sendmail in a longtime, I'm more of a postfix person.


Are there two files? /etc/mail/local-host-names -> for the domain name your accepting email for.
and

/etc/mail/local-hostnames -> for aliases of the hostname ..and ?

Googleing both names brings up more options for /etc/local-hostnames

[les]

Is this a possible type error

Here is what i change in sendmail.....

local-hostnames:
mydomain.com

I think scalix installer makes a file called
local-host-names and places the scalix server name in the file.

I've not used sendmail in a longtime, I'm more of a postfix person.


Are there two files? /etc/mail/local-host-names -> for the domain name your accepting email for.
and

/etc/mail/local-hostnames -> for aliases of the hostname ..and ?

Googleing both names brings up more options for /etc/local-hostnames

sorry it was a typo....

there is only one... /etc/mail/local-host-names

its a sendmail file. Scalix does not create it or insert anything into it. You have to manually add in your local domains so that sendmail knows whats local.