SMTP inbound queue

[feken]

I've upgraded to 8.1 saturday night without any problems.. everything was running smooth.

Until today, some mail got not delivered and my SMTP inbound queue was filling up with messages. I've never had this happen on plesk 7.+

I decided to restart all mail services, but this didn't resolve the problem... I had to restart the server to get the queue running again.

Anybody any idea what could have caused this.. I couldn't find any clue in the logfiles

 

[feken]

It's happening again as we speak..

The SMPT inbound queue is holding messages.. their status is spooling and they don't get delivered..

Again no clue in the logfiles..

 

[DUKom2]

same issue

Hey feken, I've been struggling with customer support on this one for days. I was instructed to over install Mail Enable 1.96 with default values and that everything would repair. It did not. My ques are still filling and only cure is reboot, which I have the horrible fix of an automated reboot every 2 hours to get it moving again.

I'm pretty sure what is happening to us is related to the MTA pickup event.

A question for you feken and anyone with a working install is:

what is in your Mail Enable MTA pickup event? Is it blank, a reference to memailfilter.exe or a reference to FILTER.BAT?

Also do your MTA logs say that the pickup event is failing due to can't find file?

I don't see any spam assasin tags in email headers either. Is anyone that is having problems using Kaspersky or DR. Web? I think also the av uses the MTA to scan files.

My best guess is that feken and I are missing this FILTER.BAT file that the MTA is referencing or that our MTA's should be referencing a different file. Or maybe a third problem I can't see.

I think maybe with the community's help we can fix this since customer support can't or won't. Thanks to anyone that can help.

DUKom2

 

[feken]

Hay DUKom2

My pickup event was checked but the path to any executable was empty.
What I did was clear out the checkbox to disable the pickup event.

I've spamassissin running and that is still working (except of tagging forwared mail) I guess all is done by the mailbox pickup event.

Since I've cleared the checkbox the queue hasn't filled up again.. but I scared I could happen anytime again.

Do you know what functionality i'm missing without the MTA pickup event ?

 

[feken]

I've checked my setup but I don't have a filter.bat.. What does that do ?

 

[DUKom2]

Not sure what it does. I assume it is a batch file that might pass some specific cmd lines to the memailfilter.exe executable to filter the mail.

Are you sure that your spam assasin is working? Are you getting the proper lines in your mail headers? My previous plesk didn't have anything in the file area and had the event checked. I assumed that unchecking would cause the mail to go through but I'm pretty sure this would disable the event fire for the spam and/or av scanners.

I've read that in ME standard direct spam filters are not supported and that they must be routed through an MTA event that fires an exe that scans the mail then passes it back.

Both spam assasin and ME guys say this is a plesk/swsoft issure since they have integrated the two packages in their product, that only support for this issue can come from them.

I am super pissed about the lack of a clear answer from tech support on this. I have been super clear in the description of this problem and tech support refuses to answer the question of what the correct settings are without an incident payment, especially since I followed exact instructions for the clean install of 8.1 and then followed tech support advice to over install ME.

I'm tired of being told by tech support to overinstall an app whenever there is a small configuration issue. For the record outside of plesk I've never had issues with ME, HmailServer or IMAIL. It is frustrating to me as an admin, to my customers that are brave enough to be on the plesk server we're running, and to the people out there that have had this problem. There have been other threads here somewhat related but no solid resolutions, just comments such as "I upgraded and the problem went away".

Who know's feken, maybe someone will give us a clear answer as to the complete functionality of the interaction of plesk/me/sa and we will find out if unchecking the event is the answer and spam filtering is preserved or if restoring the file and enabling is correct.

DUKom2

 

[feken]

Yes.. i'm absolutly sure Spamassissin works..

A mail from 3 minutes ago:

X-Spam-Flag: YES
X-Spam-Level: *****
X-Spam-Prev-Subject: essential exclusion
X-Spam-Report: * 0.8 EXTRA_MPART_TYPE Header has extraneous Content-type:...type= entry * 3.4 HELO_DYNAMIC_IPADDR Relay HELO'd using suspicious hostname (IP addr * 1) * 0.0 UNPARSEABLE_RELAY Informational: message has unparseable relay * lines * 1.1 HTML_IMAGE_ONLY_20 BODY: HTML: images with 1600-2000 bytes of words * 0.6 HTML_40_50 BODY: Message is 40% to 50% HTML * 0.0 HTML_MESSAGE BODY: HTML included in message
X-Spam-Status: Yes, score=5.9 required=3.0 tests=EXTRA_MPART_TYPE, HELO_DYNAMIC_IPADDR,HTML_40_50,HTML_IMAGE_ONLY_20,HTML_MESSAGE, UNPARSEABLE_RELAY autolearn=no version=3.1.1

So that must be handeled by the mailbox pickup event.. It doesn't mark forwarded messages as spam.. that could be because of the missing MTA pickup.. I don't know.

 

[feken]

This sucks big time.. today 550 messages in smtp inbound queue..

HELP.. only rebooting will help

 

[DUKom2]

Same here feken. I have the server set to reboot every 2 hours. Which is stupid, but the only choice. I have said it in other posts, I am leaving plesk. I can't afford to loose any more customers over this.

DUKom2

 

[blemming]

I am having this problem as well and it seems to be happy along with a nother issue i am having. It seems that the process winlogon.exe is continously opening handles. This just started after the upgrade to 8.1 as well. The system eventually runs out of resources and the mail is not longer moved from the inbound queue and IIS starts reporting an internal server error.

I don't konw what to do either. The only recourse for me has also been a hard reboot.

 

[feken]

I just found out that my server was running mailenable 1.9. with plesk 8.1 that should be 1.96. (strange since my plesk upgrade was successful)

So I manually upgraded mailenable to version 1.98.. hoping this will resolve the issue.. until now it's running fine.. but that's only one hour in my case the queue stops about three times a week.. so I have to wait to know if this has resolved the issue.

 

[DUKom2]

OK guys, might have figured this one out. Check your permissions for the IME_ADMIN account. Grant that account administrator access and see if that solves it. If it does, then look in the mailenable forums using that account as your search string and you will find more specifics about setting the proper permissions.

I now have:

the MTA event checked
directed at memailfilter.exe
pickup after checked
and IME_ADMIN has admin privs

Now mail is flying through properly. See if this works for you guys and let me know.

DUKom2

 

[hansenc]

I found my problem was with AntiVirus, I disabled it and everything is now working fine.

 

[DUKom2]

Yeah, my mail started clogging up again after a day. Did you install Kaspersky? I notice that you have to pay for a subscription. If that's the case then this is rediculous that it would allow you to enable Kaspersky then not tell you that you have to subscribe and then on top of it to malfunction.

DUKom2

 

[feken]

My setup is still running OK.. DUkom2 are you running mailenable 1.98 ?

 

[hansenc]

Right now I’m just relying on the desktop to do the virus scanning. Something I don't like doing but I needed this fixed for Wednesday morning and was running out of options.

 

[DUKom2]

Yes running 1.98

DUKom2

 

[hansenc]

Im running MailEnable Standard 1.96

How do i go abouts upgrading it?

 

[feken]

Just download it (standard edition) from mailenable.com en run the installer.. worked for me...

Btw.. plesk 8.1 should be 1.96. Mine was 1.9 but I couldn't find 1.96 on the site so i used 1.96

Until now it seems to have resolved the problems (fingers crossed)

 

[hansenc]

I will try it tonight after imaging the server or somethign, i dont want to risk losing it. now plesk was preinstalled on my server from my host (softlayer) does that matter? will i still be able to do the update.