Bug in Mercury 4.52

posted Jun 6 '08 at 5:54 pm

Hi, two weeks ago I've subscribed to a service that sends an e-mail at
2 a.m. The default exit / restart also happens to be at 2 a.m. It
turns out that when exit / restart happens it doesn't wait for
everything to be idle, but instead just does its thing, and anything in
progress will be lost. I know that since I have POPFile and all the
service e-mails got as far as POPFile, but not into Mercury. I've now
moved the reload time to 2:15 and they're now progressing all the way
to the client. But what might be lost at 2:15?

Nothing will be lost, they'll be resent. The SMTP protocol is designed to handle breaks in communication between the sender and the receiver. If a SMTP connection is lost in the middle of a transaction, the sender is required by the RFC to requeue the mail to be sent later. Now if the service does not resend a message that fails to complete then you have to talk to them about their bug in their service.

<blockquote>Hi, two weeks ago I've subscribed to a service that sends an e-mail at 2 a.m.&nbsp;&nbsp; The default exit / restart also happens to be at 2 a.m.&nbsp; It turns out that when exit / restart happens it doesn't wait for everything to be idle, but instead just does its thing, and anything in progress will be lost.&nbsp; I know that since I have POPFile and all the service e-mails got as far as POPFile, but not into Mercury.&nbsp; I've now moved the reload time to 2:15 and they're now progressing all the way to the client.&nbsp; But what might be lost at 2:15?</blockquote>Nothing will be lost, they'll be resent.&nbsp; The SMTP protocol is designed to handle breaks in communication between the sender and the receiver. &nbsp; If a SMTP connection is lost in the middle of a transaction, the sender is required by the RFC to requeue the mail to be sent later.&nbsp; Now if the service does not resend a message&nbsp; that fails to complete then you have to talk to them about their bug in their service.

EricT2000

posted Jun 6 '08 at 2:49 pm

Hi, two weeks ago I've subscribed to a service that sends an e-mail at 2 a.m. The default exit / restart also happens to be at 2 a.m. It turns out that when exit / restart happens it doesn't wait for everything to be idle, but instead just does its thing, and anything in progress will be lost. I know that since I have POPFile and all the service e-mails got as far as POPFile, but not into Mercury. I've now moved the reload time to 2:15 and they're now progressing all the way to the client. But what might be lost at 2:15?

I think the reload function should pause all modules and wait until they've quiesced. Only when every module has gone idle should Mercury restart.

Thanks,
Eric

Hi, two weeks ago I've subscribed to a service that sends an e-mail at 2 a.m.&nbsp;&nbsp; The default exit / restart also happens to be at 2 a.m.&nbsp; It turns out that when exit / restart happens it doesn't wait for everything to be idle, but instead just does its thing, and anything in progress will be lost.&nbsp; I know that since I have POPFile and all the service e-mails got as far as POPFile, but not into Mercury.&nbsp; I've now moved the reload time to 2:15 and they're now progressing all the way to the client.&nbsp; But what might be lost at 2:15? I think the reload function should pause all modules and wait until they've quiesced.&nbsp; Only when every module has gone idle should Mercury restart. Thanks, Eric

Rolf Lindby

posted Jun 6 '08 at 3:46 pm

Is there a special reason you need to restart Mercury after daily maintenance? Mercury help says:

Exit and restart each day after performing daily maintenance In rare instances, you may wish to restart Mercury each day (for instance, your network connection may need to be relinquished periodically in order to keep it alive). If you check this control, then Mercury will perform a graceful shutdown after it has completed its daily maintenance tasks. If you are using the Mercury loader program, LOADER.EXE, to run it, the loader will restart Mercury after a three second delay.

/Rolf

Is there a special reason you need to restart Mercury after daily maintenance? Mercury help says:<blockquote>Exit and restart each day after performing daily maintenance&nbsp;&nbsp; In rare instances, you may wish to restart Mercury each day (for instance, your network connection may need to be relinquished periodically in order to keep it alive). If you check this control, then Mercury will perform a graceful shutdown after it has completed its daily maintenance tasks. If you are using the Mercury loader program, LOADER.EXE, to run it, the loader will restart Mercury after a three second delay.&nbsp;</blockquote>/Rolf&nbsp;

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