false Max Defers warnings.

[Kerrya]

I've noticed a number of clients opening tickets after getting a max defers message. We go through the normal steps/ mailing lists/bad users/autoresponders/malware etc with no luck/ Track delivery shows 0 failures leading up to the max defers messages . Is it possible that the server hits that condition and sends the warnings to every account that emails following that happens to send email at that time regards less of whether or not they are the offending user?

 

[ankeshanand]

Sometimes, EXIM is the problem which leads to Deferred Messages but still they are shown in cPanel>Track Delivery. BY Default, EXIM tries to re-deliver the Mail and in your case, that may be happening. You can check Deferred Messages in WHM and see the list. Alternatively, When I was sorting a way out of this problem, I just reset the EXIM Configuration to Original and it solved Everything.

As far as your question is concerned about offending user, cPanel has only 1 Directive for Emails, i.e Max Outgoing Emails per Domain and There is no restrictions of receiving Mails!

 

[cPRex]

@Kerrya - we list a couple possible reasons for this to happen in our guide here:

The "exceeded the max defers and failures per hour" message

What does the message mean? The "exceeded the max defers and failures per hour" message is a cPanel message that outgoing email is being held on the server until the number of emails that hav...

support.cpanel.net

Can you work through that and see if it helps?

 

[Kerrya]

I could use some help understanding the settings in WHM for defers.

Our server is set to " Maximum percentage of failed or deferred messages a domain may send per hour " = 50%

It is also set to " Number of failed or deferred messages a domain may send before protections can be triggered " = 25

So this seems redundant to me. It seems that if the user sends 5 emails and three of them fail then they are over the 50% threshold and the server will stop sending.

Where am I going wrong?

Kerry

 

[cPRex]

If you click the small [?] block next to the setting in WHM >> Tweak Settings, you'll see this next to the "Number of failed or deferred messages a domain may send before protections can be triggered"

When a domain sends this number of failed or deferred messages in an hour, and the “Maximum percentage of failed or deferred messages a domain may send per hour” has also been reached, the domain will be temporarily unable to send outgoing mail.

That indicates that both fields need to be met in order for the protection to kick in. Are you saying that you are seeing this happen when only a few messages are sent, so the "25" value is seemingly ignored?

 

[Kerrya]

Yes, exactly. I have two different clients each with max defer issues going on. We've tried to drill down to what is causing it but if we go in cpanel track delivery we don't see any messages being bounced at all until suddenly they get the ones blocked by the max defers rule.

I would have expected to see some bounced messages before that.

Neither client use email distribution lists of any kind.

Neither client is aware of any problem until they start getting the max defers warning.

 

[cPRex]

Interesting - let me do some testing on this and I'll get back with you soon.

 

[cPRex]

I wasn't able to reproduce this issue on my end. I setup the server with the same Tweak Settings options and didn't run into the early limit like you did. It might be best to open a ticket with our support team so we can check the system having the issue directly. If you do that, please post the ticket number so I can follow along and make sure this thread stays updated.