Problems with E-mail Delivery - Mostly frozen and stuck in queue

[mystic-drifter]

Hello all,

Since early January, my 2 hosting servers have started to freeze almost all outbound messages and they got stuck in the mail queue. The only way that I've managed to get them to send is to do a graceful reboot, and then re-delivery each of the emails via CPanel or command line. The mail server will work fine for a few hours and then the same problem happens again.

Even without rebooting the servers, a manual delivery through CPanel does the work too, most of the time, occasionally produces the same error and messages become frozen.

From exim_mainlog, I found lots of errors about "remote_smtp defer (-1): smtp transport process returned non-zero status 0x000e: terminated by signal 14"

The CPanel delivery log shows similar error too
--------------------------------------------------
LOG: MAIN
-> [email protected] R=lookuphost T=remote_smtp H=mx3.hotmail.com [65.55.37.88]
2880 Connecting to mx1.bt.mail.yahoo.com [217.146.188.189]:25 ... connected
2880 SMTP<< 220 mta826.mail.ird.yahoo.com ESMTP YSmtp service ready
2880 SMTP>> EHLO garm.silverserve.com
2880 SMTP<< 250-mta826.mail.ird.yahoo.com
2880 250-8BITMIME
2880 250-SIZE 41943040
2880 250 PIPELINING
2880 SMTP>> MAIL FROM:<[email protected]> SIZE=296099
2880 SMTP>> RCPT TO:<[email protected]>
2880 SMTP>> DATA
2880 SMTP<< 250 sender <[email protected]> ok
2880 SMTP<< 250 recipient <[email protected]> ok
2880 SMTP<< 354 go ahead
2880 SMTP>> writing message and terminating "."
2880 SMTP<< 250 ok dirdel
2880 SMTP>> QUIT
LOG: MAIN
=> [email protected] R=lookuphost T=remote_smtp H=mx1.bt.mail.yahoo.com [217.146.188.189]
LOG: MAIN
== [email protected] R=lookuphost T=remote_smtp defer (-1): smtp transport process returned non-zero status 0x000e: terminated by signal 14
LOG: MAIN
Frozen

=> [email protected] R=lookuphost T=remote_smtp H=jmail.jpost.com [192.115.189.13] X=TLSv1:AES256-SHA:256
LOG: MAIN
-> [email protected] R=lookuphost T=remote_smtp H=jmail.jpost.com [192.115.189.13] X=TLSv1:AES256-SHA:256
12186 Connecting to mailgw.haaretz.co.il [192.118.73.6]:25 ... connected
12186 SMTP<< 220 scanner1.haaretz.co.il ESMTP Symantec Mail Security
12186 SMTP>> EHLO garm.silverserve.com
12186 SMTP<< 250-scanner1.haaretz.co.il says EHLO to 85.31.64.131:54531
12186 250-8BITMIME
12186 250-PIPELINING
12186 250 ENHANCEDSTATUSCODES
12186 SMTP>> MAIL FROM:<[email protected]>
12186 SMTP>> RCPT TO:<[email protected]>
12186 SMTP>> DATA
12186 SMTP<< 250 MAIL FROM accepted
12186 SMTP<< 250 RCPT TO accepted
12186 SMTP<< 354 continue. finished with "\r\n.\r\n"
12186 SMTP>> writing message and terminating "."
12186 SMTP<< 250 OK D4/B4-02618-CF61F5B4
12186 SMTP>> QUIT
LOG: MAIN
=> [email protected] R=lookuphost T=remote_smtp H=mailgw.haaretz.co.il [192.118.73.6]
LOG: MAIN
== [email protected] R=lookuphost T=remote_smtp defer (-1): smtp transport process returned non-zero status 0x000e: terminated by signal 14
LOG: MAIN
Frozen
---------------------------------------------------------

I've googled the previous few weeks but still haven't found a solution. Does anyone experiencing the same problem?

Also, I also noticed that the high memory usage on my both servers. The load is okay though. Here's the top output -
------------------------------------------------------
top - 12:28:04 up 2 days, 19:13, 2 users, load average: 1.55, 1.00, 0.92
Tasks: 313 total, 1 running, 310 sleeping, 0 stopped, 2 zombie
Cpu(s): 6.3% us, 1.5% sy, 0.1% ni, 80.2% id, 11.3% wa, 0.0% hi, 0.6% si
Mem: 16477704k total, 16230368k used, 247336k free, 557212k buffers
Swap: 8385920k total, 208k used, 8385712k free, 13391288k cached

The servers had been running with 12 GB of RAM in years without any problem. I added 4 GB to each of them last 2 days but it still filled up so quickly. If there's any underlying issues that I should be aware of? I think the RAM issue and the mail issue are somehow related.

My servers are CentOS release 4.8 64bit running cPanel 11.24.5-S38506 - WHM 11.24.2 - X 3.9

Please .... help ...


-Andrea-

 

[goodmove]

Have you, or anyone else, found a solution to this? Can you pls let us know?

 

[mystic-drifter]

Have you, or anyone else, found a solution to this? Can you pls let us know?

Yes. It's the flock calls and the manipulation of SIG{ALRM} from exim.pl.local that caused the problem. cPanel has pushed the fix into 11.25.0 build numbered 43371 or higher. That has resolved the mail handling issue on my servers.

 

[goodmove]

Yes. It's the flock calls and the manipulation of SIG{ALRM} from exim.pl.local that caused the problem. cPanel has pushed the fix into 11.25.0 build numbered 43371 or higher. That has resolved the mail handling issue on my servers.

Great, thanks. Were you getting the same sort of error messages before the update, i.e.: "smtp transport process returned non-zero status 0x000e: terminated by signal 14" ?

Edit: Upgraded one server to the latest Release but the problem has not gone away. Forcing redelivery is creating the same 'non-zero' error.

 

[mystic-drifter]

Great, thanks. Were you getting the same sort of error messages before the update, i.e.: "smtp transport process returned non-zero status 0x000e: terminated by signal 14" ?

Edit: Upgraded one server to the latest Release but the problem has not gone away. Forcing redelivery is creating the same 'non-zero' error.

Strange, my servers have been running okay since the patch was implemented. My suggestion is to redelivery the frozen mail in debug mode or use strace to see where the bottleneck is. In my case, it wasn't something that I could fix without getting help from cPanel developers.

Btw, that's exactly the error I got before the fix (it's clearly listed in my first post )

 

[yacine]

email not send

i have problem in sending email,iam novice and i want somone help me ,this my

code:

package service;
import javax.mail.internet.*;
import javax.mail.*;
import java.util.*;

/**
 * Classe permettant d'envoyer un mail.
 */
public class TestMail {
   private final static String MAILER_VERSION = "Java";
   public static boolean envoyerMailSMTP(String serveur, boolean debug) {
         boolean result = false;
         try {
                  Properties prop = System.getProperties();
                  prop.put("mail.smtp.host", serveur);
                  Session session = Session.getInstance(prop,null);
                  Message message = new MimeMessage(session);
                  message.setFrom(new InternetAddress("[email protected]"));
                  InternetAddress[] internetAddresses = new InternetAddress[1];
                  internetAddresses[0] = new InternetAddress("[email protected]");
                  message.setRecipients(Message.RecipientType.TO,internetAddresses);
                  message.setSubject("Test");
                  message.setText("test mail");
                  message.setHeader("X-Mailer", MAILER_VERSION);
                  message.setSentDate(new Date());
                  session.setDebug(debug);
               
                  Transport.send(message);
                  
                  result = true;
         } catch (AddressException e) {
                  e.printStackTrace();
         } catch (MessagingException e) {
                  e.printStackTrace();
         }
         return result;
   }
   
   public static void main(String[] args) {
       System.out.println("le message "+TestMail.envoyerMailSMTP("smtp.menara.ma",true));  
   }
}

and displaied console

DEBUG: setDebug: JavaMail version 1.4.3
DEBUG: getProvider() returning javax.mail.Provider[TRANSPORT,smtp,com.sun.mail.smtp.SMTPTransport,Sun Microsystems, Inc]
DEBUG SMTP: useEhlo true, useAuth false
DEBUG SMTP: trying to connect to host "smtp.menara.ma", port 25, isSSL false
220 smtp-s5.menara.ma ESMTP Symantec Mail Security
DEBUG SMTP: connected to host "smtp.menara.ma", port: 25

EHLO yacineOrd
250-smtp-s5.menara.ma says EHLO to 41.248.252.169:5100
250-8BITMIME
250-PIPELINING
250 ENHANCEDSTATUSCODES
DEBUG SMTP: Found extension "8BITMIME", arg ""
DEBUG SMTP: Found extension "PIPELINING", arg ""
DEBUG SMTP: Found extension "ENHANCEDSTATUSCODES", arg ""
DEBUG SMTP: use8bit false
MAIL FROM:<[email protected]>
250 MAIL FROM accepted
RCPT TO:<[email protected]>
250 RCPT TO accepted
DEBUG SMTP: Verified Addresses
DEBUG SMTP:   [email protected]
DATA
354 continue.  finished with "\r\n.\r\n"
Date: Thu, 25 Feb 2010 16:44:07 +0100 (CET)
From: [email protected]
To: [email protected]
Message-ID: <[email protected]>
Subject: Test
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
X-Mailer: Java


test mail
.
250 OK 99/04-09872-374A68B4
QUIT
221 smtp-s5.menara.ma closing connection
le message true

any throwen exception and the e mail is not send

thanks for your help