I can't think why the stalling is occurring only intermittently.  It can't be a filesystem permission problem.  Perhaps the jam occurs due to networking conditions.  Have you tried to change to MercuryC (if you want to)?  Alternatively, try increasing the number of MercuryE delivery threads - say, to 50 (dangerous if the host is doing anything time-critical).  See if that helps you at all.

If the jobs in the queue have errors (QIF files), it'd be nice to know what those were - if, perhaps, many open connections are occupying system resources, we might be able to explain why restarting the server made them pass through.

Cheers,

Sabahattin

Hello all -

I've encountered my first problem with Mercury32: it appears outgoing mail processing has stalled.

The number of files in the Queue folder is quite large and growing (over 2400 at last count).  In the Mercury Core Process window, the "Outgoing jobs" stats show: "Ready: 1273" (this number continues to increase); Pending: 10; Complete: 1 (these stats have not updated in the past 20 minutes).

 I'd appreciate any suggestions on where I can begin troubleshooting this.

 thanks-

djc  
 

Just adding more information to this thread:

I am seeing this message in the "SMTP Client (end-to-end version)" window with some of the jobs:

"451 4.7.1 Delivery Delayed"

And a quick web search tells me this may mean this mail server is on a "grey list".  I find that quite likely, since the most active addresses Mercury is handling are aliases to e-mail addresses at an ISP.  I'm quite sure a fair amount of that is spam, and the ISP may have identified my Mercury installation as the culprit, rather than just the intermediate.

So I wonder if it's possible if enough messages tagged with the "Delivery Delayed" flag are in the Outgoing jobs queue whether it may be the source of the Mercury stall.      

More info:

I contacted the ISP to which the bulk of the outbound mail is aliased and they confirmed my Mercury server is on a greylist, with a 5 minute delay on each message for each new recipient/sender combination.

Mercury "hangs" on end-to-end delivery when there are ten "processing jobs" listed in the window.

If I wait a few minutes, then stop & restart the server, it will sometimes deliver a few more outbound messages before stalling again.  It will remain stalled indefinitely ... well, I havent actually waited that long.  I've been stopping/starting the server all afternoon to keep a trickle flowing.

 

Your ISP is doing this?  Can't you get them to put your server on a whitelist?  Most graylisting applications have some way to quit delaying a server for any user after it has shown it will retry. 

And suddenly the flood gates open!

I restarted the server again, and a moment later it was processing the queue like crazy.

Now it shows: "Outgoing jobs: 0; Pending: 494; Complete: 4"

A quick check of the queue folder shows the majority of the remaining files there are indeed messages aliased to the ISP.

Very strange day.

Hi, yes, I actually just contacted the ISP and they put the machine on a white list.

But they only just did this - ie. after Mercury's queue logjam broke up of its own accord.

Happy to say the remaining Pending messages are now flowing as well, now that the machine is whitelisted   .
 

Outgoing mail processing has hung again.

I can now say it is not related to the greylist issue, since that has been resolved by placing the server on a whitelist.

Currently Mercury shows: Outgoing jobs: Ready 525; Pending: 21; Complete 3

1109 files in the Queue folder

And no activity in the "Mercury SMTP Client (end-to-end version)" window since I last tried restarting the server 10 minutes ago.

The "Current connections and status" pane of that window lists 10 jobs in a row, eg:  "6:04:12 processing job MO00000C".

Not sure where to look next.
 

2+ hours later - still stalled.  1753 files in the Queue folder.

Apparently it's not just outgoing mail that's hung.  Delivery of messages to local mailboxes was also not occuring until I stopped & restarted Mercury.

However restarting didn't cure the stalled processing in the "Mercury SMTP Client (end-to-end version)" window.

Restarting Mercury seems to cause it to
 

If you go to the queue are there any QIF files?  If so, what do you see when you open them?