email queue

[jbleland]

I am having a problem with emails getting stuck in the queue for up to a week at a time before a message bounces back from the mailer daemeon saying the the recipient cannot be reached. It shouldn't take this long. I've got customers who are not very happy. Help, what can I do?

 

[rohans]

I am having a similar problem. The emails are legitimate but they get stuck in the mail queue. Why is this and how do I fix it?

Thankx for any help. It has been a nightmare so far.

 

[ClausVB]

IMHO this is (sometimes) normal behavior. Your mailserver should try to deliver a mail three or four days.

Greylisting for example refuses the first delivery if the triplet (sender, IP, recipient) is not known.

If a mail-relay is down for a few hours, your mailserver has to try again.

AOL sometimes is a problem. It does not tell you: "Not found" and sends the MAILOR DAEMON back to you ... no, my mail-relay says:

After five days: "schnuff.di.wuff@aol.com ... finally given up", which means: "This recipient does not seem to exist."

There is nothing you can do about it. On the other hand ... you could reduce the number of attempts (max. 2 days), but this is not recommended, because a mail-relay could be unreachable (e.g. weekend).

Regards,
Claus

 

[jbleland]

I have noticed that it usually does that to aol accounts but it does it to others as well. Anyone else have any helpful ideas?

 

[rohans]

How can I find out the cause/reason why the mail is not leaving the mail queue?

Also, how do I see the value for the next attemp or change it from what it is to 2 days?

If it is the receipient's domain that has teh problem, how do i check this?

I am running Plesk 8.0.1

 

[merlin@]

I too am seeing a similar problem between my Plesk server and one (but not the other) of my other shared hosting accounts.

Emails in both directions would stall for 4 days then bounce. Both accounts have no apparent trouble sending/receiving with other hosts

My shared hosting provider couldn't find the cause so moved my shared account to another of their servers. In principle it shouldn't have made a difference but it has, and now emails can be exchanged with the Plesk server with a problem.

Moving my shared account has only bypassed the problem so am interested if/when the root cause for this thread is found.

 

[jbleland]

I guess there is nobody that can help us on this one. I just don't buy it that it is normal. It never happend to me before when I had shared hosting!

 

[merlin@]

I agree.

In my case each host can send/receive to other MTAs without any trouble, just something about the combination means they won't talk to each other!