AMS Locking Up

[cearnshaw]

I've had problems with Ability Mail Server locking up. Basically, I can still log into the program, but SMTP, POP3 and Web Mail functions stop working until the program is deinitialised and reinitialised. It happened five times today. This problem first appeared a couple months ago, when I found that the NT service would quit running. Since that time I've been running AMS as an application instead of as a service, and it seemed to stay running that way. Now, it's exhibiting the same problem running as an application.

When I open the Windows task manager I see two instances on Ability Mail Server2.exe running, one using 54,724k of memory and the other using 1,452k. Is this normal?

I had a similar problem a few years ago after I loaded Kaspersky A/V. We eventually had to reformat the hard drive and reload AMS to get rid of Kaspersky and make things work properly again. This time we've been running the same copy of Avast A/V for about the last nine or ten months. No problem until recently.

We're running Windows XP Pro, SP2.

Thanks in advance for your assistance.

Cameron

[Code Crafters]

We are aware of an issue recently that causes POP3 to "hang" for up to 30 minutes before recovering under certain conditions. However, this is the first report of it potentially affecting other services which isn't a bad thing because the area we're investigating as the possible cause would indeed affect all services so this could actually be more confirmation that we may be looking in the right place.

Normally, antivirus software could cause these issues with SMTP, POP3 and IMAP4 as many intercept and interfere with mail communication on default ports. However, WebMail shouldn't be affected unless running on port 80 but normally web traffic is never messed with by antivirus anyway so hopefully it's not an antivirus issue.

FYI: It is normal however to have 2 AMS executables running as one is the main application and one is a monitoring protective shell to stop hacking attempts and other virus type attacks.

Sorry for any inconvenience this is causing. We are working on this as a top priority to resolve ASAP.

[cearnshaw]

Thanks Rob. I look forward to hearing more about this in due course. Strangely, it didn't lock up once yesterday. I can't see any rhyme or reason to it.

Cam

[cearnshaw]

Hello Rob... I'm just wondering if any progress has been made on this? It's becoming quite problematic for us now that we have over 2,000 user accounts.

Cam

[Code Crafters]

We have just done another update but nothing significant was done to solve this problem in particular in this update. Investigations are ongoing for this. Try the latest update and see if this helps resolve any issues.

[cearnshaw]

Thanks for your reply Chris. I tried to update (in the usual way through the "help" button) but got a message after the download that the license key could not be found. I was in panic for a few seconds as all my customers were then without mail service, but fortunately I was still able to open the old instance of AMS. I'm assuming I must have put the license key file in the wrong place. Can you tell me the name of the license file and which directory it needs to reside in?

Thanks,


Cameron

[Code Crafters]

Your license key file will be under "C:\Program Files\Code-Crafters\Ability Mail Server 2\config\license.ini". However, if you're running Vista make sure you run in Administrator mode or the settings will be loaded from your user area and appear that all settings are reset. New installations will now go into "C:\Code-Crafters\" to avoid these Vista issues. This is the case with a new installation of Ability FTP Server 2 but not sure if this has been done with Ability Mail Server 2 yet.

[cearnshaw]

When I perform the update it wants to install the files to "C:\Program Files\Code-Crafters\Ability Mail Server 2\Ability Mail Server 2", but I think it should go where my existing installation resides, which is in "C:\Program Files\Code-Crafters\Ability Mail Server 2". However, if I try to install there it prompts me that the directory already exists. Is it safe to install the new version there without losing my existing configuration and account data?

Cam

[Code Crafters]

Yes, it's totally safe as the installation files don't include the configuration files at all. These are generated when you run the software and will remain uncahnged after re-installing over the top of the old installation.

[cearnshaw]

I updated to 2.72 yesterday. AMS ran for about 12 hours then locked up in the middle of the night with a Windows message stating that AMS has encountered a problem and needs to close, I restarted it but now it locks up like this every few minutes. I've tried running it as both a service and program, and it doesn't seem to matter. Rebooted the server too but no joy so far.

How do I revert back to 2.70?

Cam

[cearnshaw]

Further information on this... at times SMTP and POP3 services will remain running even though the "AMS has encountered an error and needs to shutdown" message is displayed on-screen, but webmail does not work. This makes me wonder if the problem is related to the webmail service somehow.

Cam

[cearnshaw]

After locking up repeated times over a few hour period, AMS has decided to work again. It's been running for two days now without problem. Unfortunately, I don't know if or when it will start acting up again.

I do have some software on this server that backs up account data nightly. I wonder if somehow this is conflicting with AMS. Do you have any particular backup software or other method you can recommend? I'd be willing to try anything to keep this from happening again. Customers get very grumpy when they can't get their mail.

Cam

[Code Crafters]

Make sure the backup doesn't lock any files. A windows scheduled task to fire off a .bat file to copy the entire config folder is sufficient for a backup. You can exclude the accounts folder if it's too large but I imagine you want this backed up most of all. We hope to add an event scheduler to AMS in the future to allow auto-backups and other similar tasks.

Note that hopefully this week we should be launching Ability Mail Server 2011 beta which as well as adding IPv6 support also adds a new service watchdog that will restart the software if it ever stops running. This will help recover from crashes almost instantaneously and hopefully will help you with a lot of your issues. Obviously this will only be a beta release and you should probably wait until the official release to run it in a production environment but may do if you choose. Add yourself to the beta mailing list via http://www.code-crafters.com/mailinglists.html to be informed when the beta is released, and add yourself to the normal updates mailing list to be informed when the official release is available.

Email us via info@code-crafters.com if you want a setup of 2.70 to revert your installation.

[cearnshaw]

Thanks Chris. Since it seems to be running OK now I'll just leave it at 2.72 and hope for the best.

Cam

[Code Crafters]

Ok good. I'd still recommend upgrading to Ability Mail Server 2011 official release when launched for the service watchdog and of course IPv6 support too.

[elimelight]

I've also been experiencing an increased frequency of lock-up. I have been running 2.70 for some time, but the lock-ups only started in earnest about a week ago - sometimes several a day. A few days ago I upgraded to 2.72, but this hasn't helped. I am running Windows 2008 Server, and I run AMS in Application mode, switching from the (invisible) service after any reboot. Anti-Virus is NOD32 v3.0 business. I've never left a lock-up as long as 30 minutes to see if it clears itself.

When the situation arises, I've found that I can't De-Initialise - that just hangs, so I end up doing an End Task and restarting. The OS is fully patched, and even a reboot doesn't seem to help.

Just thought I would add my recent experience to this thread!

Steve

[Code Crafters]

You may be better running in service mode and using remote web admin where needed for altering settings or switch back to application mode when needed. Ability Mail Server 2011 beta is now also available if you want to trial that.

[cearnshaw]

I hate to be one of the first to try anything, especially a mail server with 2,500+ accounts on it, but the lock-up problems we've been having with V2.7x have become quite a problem. Sometimes it runs for a week or two, then one day it will lock up four five times, as it has done today.

Does the watchdog feature in V3 watch all the services? Sometimes we see it is just web mail that quits working. In fact, that's always the first to go, and then sometimes the other services quit as well, sometimes not.

Hopefully the architecture of V3 has changed to eliminate this problem completely.

Cam

[Code Crafters]

The Ability Mail Server 2011 watchdog watches the NT service for failing and restarts it if necessary. It doesn't currently watch individual mail server services like WebMail for unresponsiveness. However, this is a good idea and I'll forward the suggestion to the team so that the service could be restarted if any service doesn't respond in a timely manner. Note that this kind of problem is very rare and not reported by many other customers. Just check that it's not your antivirus causing any issues. POP3 retrievals has also been known to have some problems but this shouldn't affect WebMail. We are currently working on a full re-write of Ability Mail Server which will hopefully resolve this issue but this is likely to be around 12 months away yet unfortunately. If we knew the source of your problem we could try to fix it but at the moment we don't have many clues as to the source.

[cearnshaw]

Chris,

Do you have a suggestion as to the AV you've found to be most stable with AMS? We're presently using Avast. We used Trend MIcro with good success for a few years, until the AMS server got a virus (even though patterns were up-to-date), so we switched. First we tried Kaspersky, which was a distaster as it kept shutting down AMS, apparently thinking it was a mass-mailing virus. Had to reformat the hard drive to get AMS working properly again after that fiasco, so I'm reluctant to try new A/V without having some idea of the complications I might expect.

Thanks!

Cam