Scalix Forums

I'm running into an issue where users will often receive multiple copies of inbound emails. This does not happen all the time, and there is nothing in /var/log/mail which would give me any insight as to what the issue is. The problem does not appear to be on the client side because it occurs regardless of the client used.

Where do I start looking for this sort of issue?

receive multiple copies of inbound emails

Where are the messages coming from? Is there a pattern? Do they come rapid fire or over time?

Inbound is handled by smtpd by default. If you telnet to your scalix server on port 25 does it say Scalix SMTP Relay? Then you've not changed the default.

You may want to turn on debugging by editing /var/opt/sys/general.cfg and adding

DEBUG_LOG=TRUE

then restart smtpd. The log file will be written to /var/opt/scalix/tmp/smtpd.log. Keep an eye on this file as there is nothing that rolls it. If it reaches 2gig smtpd will abort.

I'm wondering if the relay thinks it doesn't get the complete message so the sending side tries again.

Are you seeing anything in /var/opt/scalix/logs/fatal?

Thanks,
Don[/code][/quote]

I would also recommend that you turn up audit logging for the Service Router and the Local Delivery. To do this, type:



Now, when someone reports duplicate messages, you can search for the subject line in the /var/opt/scalix/logs/audit file. You should see an entry for "routing" and one for "delivered". If you see two messages that say routing, then Scalix was handed two messages (check the message-ID's, they'll be different).

Thanks,
Rachel

To add to this...

Local Delivery has duplicate checking which prevents a message with the same message ID from being received. I can't remember the exact number but the message IDs are saved for a certain number of messages. This is to prevent the situation where a user may be a member of a number of PDLs and could, potentially, receive more than one copy of the same message within a very short period of time.

What is the interval between receiving the copies of the message ?

Cheers

Dave

Hi all,

The messages come in all at once. However I just rebooted the server because incoming emails stalled (I do not know if it is related). As soon as I get a chance I will turn the debug level on as recommended and will post back with what I find.

--Kim

I presume you meant /var/opt/scalix/sys/general.cfg and /var/opt/scalix/sys/general.cfg?

Here is the log of an email from a cronjob which I just received at 12:00 - seven copies in my inbox but it shows up only once in the audit log:



I turned on DEBUG_LOG in /var/opt/scalix/sys/general.cfg and restarted smtpd with the following commands:

omoff -d 0 && omon smtpd

However no /var/opt/scalix/tmp/smtpd.log file was created. I searched under /var/opt/scalix with find and no result was found:

mail:/var/opt/scalix # find . -iname smtpd.log
mail:/var/opt/scalix #

I then decided to check under /var:

mail:/var # find . -iname smtpd.log
mail:/var #

smtpd.log is not present anywhere.

The duplicates all come in at once, all with the same timestamp. This occurs regardless of email client used. At the moment I have my own account configured as an administrator (for sake of convenience until everything is fully configured, then I will turn that flag off) and my inbox appears to be the only one receiving the duplicate emails. Some emails are received only once as expected, some twice, and some as many as 17(!) times.

The DEBUG_LOG=TRUE goes in the /var/opt/scalix/smtpd.cfg file and the smtpd.log file will be written to /var/opt/scalix/tmp. Now that you have audit logging set, when the dups happen again, please search the audit log for the subject and post *all* occurrences of that subject.

Thanks,
Rachel

Right, sorry, yes, I meant /var/opt/scalix/sys/ and smtpd.cfg not general.cfg. It was a long day yesterday.

Thanks,
Don

ScalixSupport wrote:Right, sorry, yes, I meant /var/opt/scalix/sys/ and smtpd.cfg not general.cfg. It was a long day yesterday.

No harm done. :) I've enabled it and restarted smtpd, and sure enough /var/opt/scalix/tmp/smtpd.log was created. I'll keep an eye on it and post back. Thanks guys! :)

{edit: I just counted all the instances of one email that came in at 2:45am, and I have 29 copies of it.}

OK I did not receive duplicates for a while but now it's started up again. I received seven copies of the following:




Routing/delivery of that message only shows up once in that log.

Here is everything in /var/opt/scalix/tmp/smtpd.log for that message - only shows up once.




There are no fatal errors in /var/opt/scalix/logs/fatal since the last one I posted. What other info should I be providing here?

Hi Kim,

Based on this, the message was only delivered once, so that may mean it's client related. How are you accessing the message, via Outlook with MAPI, SWA, POP, IMAP or ? It's is Outlook with MAPI, have you installed any plugins recently? If you look at the message headers, are the MSGIDs all the same?

Thanks,
Rachel

This appears to happen with the web client, kmail, evolution - you name it. I will do this though: I will stop using kmail (it's the one I use most of the time) and use evolution and see if the problem goes away. If it does, then we will know that kmail is the problem - in which case what should I do? Should I look into IMAP logs to see what is happening so that at least next time someone encounters this you'll quickly be able to ID the problem? I could wipe the profile from kontact (or simply rm the directories) but it won't help pinpoint the exact cause (e.g., is the problem in kmail or is it in the IMAP server)? Anyway before we jump to conclusions I'll use evolution for a bit and report back, then you can tell me how you want to proceed (if anything).

Thanks! :)

Hi guys, this turned out to be a client-side issue after all (I've avoided kmail since my last post last week). Apparantly kmail generates multiple copies of messages. Is there anything you would like me to capture in log files to help pinpoint the issue (not a big deal at this point, there is an excellent Thunderbird extension for removing duplicates), or should I just presume corruption of the local cache, remove the directory and rc files and see if the problem recurs?

One thing I didn't check was for multiple kmail processes. When I quit kmail I assumed it had exited. I could check to see if there is something funky going on when this occurs with kmail, but I'll wait until I see what you'd like me to do, because if this a problem someone else encounters it would be useful to be able to pinpoint the exact cause.

KimVette,

I got the same problem recently, one of my college receives 1000+ times of the same email from another college, and is receiving 10+ copies of another email from the same person. I'm wondering how did you solve the problem.

I'm wondering if you can describe the kmail stuff a little more, and how come it process many copies. I just tried to use kmail trying to duplicate the problem but I only got one copy. Were you able to repeat this "multiple copy" problem with Kmail later? If so, how did you do that and how did you solve it?

According to my /var/mail/maillog, there is really 1000+ incoming mail with the same from and to, so I inclined to believe it's the client-side problem.

Thanks much in advance for any reply from you or any other guys.

tchen