Disappearing email

HCL Domino Domino Forum
1

Summary : The server logs that a message has been been delivered to someones mail box, but randomly, the message does not appear in any views\ folders in the mail file. The document count for the database stays the same.

We have a 6.5.1 server on an AS400 v5r1, and a 6.5.3 server on a Win 2003 server. The mail files are clustered.

Some users are reporting that emails are not arriving. Currently, this problem has only been reported sending within our Notes domain (but due to the nature of this problem there could be many more unreported cases). The messages, that have been reported, do not contain any attachments. We use Postini for our email virus and SPAM filtering, but since these messages are being delivered by NRPC, they are not leaving the Domino domain.

I replyed to a message sent to me by Joe Bloggs, my mail server is Server1.

$MessageID of sent message 0026E213.

The following are from the server log(s)…(I changed the server names\ domains etc.):

Server1 - 07/25/2005 03:02:10 AM Router: Message 0026E213 transferred to Server2/OurDomain for Joe Bloggs/company@companydomain via Notes.

server2 - 07/25/2005 03:05:17 Router: Message 0026E213 delivered to Joe Bloggs/company

Return email for “Confirm Delivery” mail option :

Your trace: Fw: my test subject

addressed to: Joe Bloggs/company

has reached: Joe Bloggs/company

Server1/company 09:02:05 Today - 09:02:05 Today

Server2/company 09:05:15 Today - 09:05:20 Today

Server2/company 09:05:20 Today - 09:05:24 Today

The user in question (in this instance) has Notes Client 6, an R5 mail file ODS 43 (I know it should be upgraded!). I replyed from an R6 mail file, in the other case it is R6 to R6 mail file.

The document can not be found in any views\ folders. Doing a full text search for the Document in the “Inbox” or “All documents” view, using message ID, still not to be found. Ran a Fixup and compact on mail file. No emails are being held in any server Mail.box(s) (each server has 2).

Restarted server SMTP and router tasks. Restarted both servers.

BUT, replying to other emails, sending new etc., the email arrives as expected (cluster is working, in the “Inbox” and “All documents”, etc ). Is the email really not being “delivered”, or is it “hidden” in the mail file (the document count remains the same).

I am having a hard time tracking down when\ what\ why this happens. What worries me is, how many other emails have “not” arrived. I am not yet aware wether this is happening to emails being sent in or out to the internet.

Any advice or suggestions with this problem, would be greatly appreciated, as this is a serious problem for me right know.

Thanks in advance,

Nick Wall

2

Subject: Disappearing email

We had a similar issue where the system would say it delivered a message, but when we went to look for it in the destination mail file, the message coudl not be located.

In our case, it turned out a person had deleted a rule from their mail file and had not disabled it first - so the rule was still active but not displayed via the notes user interface.

To check for rules that are active and not being displayed in the rules view, use Notes Peek to open the mail file. Now examine the “profiles” area and locate the “calendarprofile”. In the calendarprofile object, you will note items called “$FilterFormula_x” where x increments +1 for each rule in the “rules” view of the mail file. You may see a formula there which is responsible for the disappearing message. If you located the problem, then try to create a new rule which does the same formule as the one which disappeared and make it active. Then disable the rule and delete it - the cooresponding “$filterFormula_x” item should be removed from the database.

Hope this helps.

3

Subject: Fletcher - awesome!

BUY THAT MAN A BEER !!!

Absolutely top notch advice. The user in question had some rules set up, and the word “document” (was being filtered out, because of ‘ahem’, letters 3,4 and 5.

And there I was thinking about clustering problems etc.

Quick follow up question : so does Domino (were 6.5 now) send\ flag anything so you can track down these “refused” messages?

Can’t thank you enough.

Regards,

Nick Wall