Problems with mailboxes not being detected

[Jodrik]

I've been running AMS for 5 years now (about 30 domains and 300 mailboxes) and several of the most intensive used accounts within our primary mail server have started showing the same problem:

They stop receiving any mail whatsoever. I've tried looking into errors on the mail logs but the accounts simply seem to not be recognised anymore by the mailserver itself which for some reason stops any traffic reaching them. I found a easy fix in simply removing the entire account and remaking it but my clients are ofcourse not very pleased with this development.

Currently I don't have any more accounts which seem to have this problem but if I get another one I'm going to try and get some more info on the logs of the accounts themself.

Is this some known issue?

[Code Crafters]

First of all thanks for being such a long standing AMS customer. You must have been with us almost since AMS's first release.

If the accounts are not receiving mail, make sure that the accounts are not full or that any daily sending limits are not reached for any IP etc. You are best checking the SMTP logs to track mails coming into those accounts to see what, if any, errors are given. These errors will help me explain accurately what the problem may be.

If simply recreating the accounts fixes the problem and you haven't changed any settings or moved to another user group then it's possible that the user's config.ini may have become corrupt effectively disabling the user and this could indiciate a hard drive starting to fail in the worst case or possibly just some Windows file access issues. I would recommend that you back up your mail server periodically so that if the hard drive were to fail you could fully recover all the data.

[Jodrik]

The mailserver itself is running on a RAID 10 so data loss should not be an effective issue (this could still be the case and I'll do some scans on it)

As far as server settings go the mailboxes that were affected are emptied using POP3 so storage isn't an issue, daily limitations in receiving mail don't exsist.

I did some minor attempts to trouble shoot the problem in the beginning and I can try and find some logs for it but here is how a small portion of the problem manivested itself:

let's say info@example.com is the inbox in question:

I tried logging into it on webmail which worked perfectly
The POP3 connector which retrieves the account could also log in
But mailing the account gave the following problems:

- External mail never got there
- Mail from my own domain on the same mailserver did not arive
- Mail from the mailbox mailing itself via webmail did not arive either

At that point I decided to remake the mailbox (as a fulltime Windows System Administrator you learn to just throw stuff away then remake it ) which involved me deleting the mailbox. In this process I got distracted by a phonecall only to find that even though I deleted the mailbox and told all folders and files to be removed a few folders re-appeared.

I opted to recreared the account under another folder name and manually removed the old directory. Even now the server seemed to use the older directory instead of the new one. I removed the account again and restarted the service. Re-created the user account with the old folder and combined it with a maintenance for the server with a complete system reboot.

Since then this account has again worked flawlessly.

I'll dig around for the logs of that day. See if anything comes up

[Code Crafters]

It sounds a very strange problem indeed. You have confirmed that the account was not disabled or deleted but mail simply failed to be delivered to the mailbox. If you have mirrored raid drives then no data should be possible to lose.

It's possible that content / antivirus / user filtering could be preventing delivery or even just that the mail was downloaded and removed via POP3 before you viewed it in the WebMail Inbox. SPAM filtering doesn't apply to WebMail mails in the current version and WebMail mail to yourself should never fail to be delivered unless one of the filtering systems intervene.

[Jodrik]

The accounts were not disabled, nor was mail getting through to my clients from any source (We provide them with in-house support as well so I could check the user-end also).

I also ruled out filtering as an option myself because other domains did not have any problems mailing to themselves or receiving external mail, plus remaking the account(s) fixed the problem and the filters applied have not changed.

Plus I have SPAM filtering disabled for Allowed Relaying sources. Currently leaning towards maybe some errors within the config.ini files, which could explain why removing the accounts could have solved the problem.

[Code Crafters]

Yeah I agree that if remaking the accounts fixed the problem then it can only be a user settings related issue such as either the users config.ini becoming corrupted somehow or the user filtering or other settings stopping the mail somehow.

[Jodrik]

Is there any way to possibly detect if there may be "bugged" .ini files?

I would like to rule this out as a possible cause and it would also be nice to have some sort of checking procedure to make sure these files work as intended (although that might be a suggestion I geuss)

[Code Crafters]

If the user config.ini file is unopenable for some reason, this should be logged in either the user's personal logs or the overall system account logs. You can view these via the start menu program group Logs folder although the users personal logs are stored in the "C:\Program Files\Code-Crafters\Ability Mail Server 2\config\accounts\<domain>\<user>\@@@logs" directory.