I have two users at a remote site, using Notes via that office’s network. They can open files via the Internet fine (for instance, their mail files) but when they send mail, it just disappears into the void. It appears in their mailboxes’s Sent folders, but is never delivered and never mentioned in the server console or log.
The only other oddity for these two boxes is that a meaningless “@OURDOMAIN” appears at the end of any Notes-style e-mail addresses they type in the To: field. However, the non-delivery also happens with external a@b.com style addresses, which do not get munged.
Any suggestions for debugging, given that I can’t see their boxes?
Subject: RE: Users can’t send mail when outside LAN
Are they using a different location document at the other office? The default ‘Internet’ location document is set to send outgoing mail ‘directly to the Internet’ (on the ‘Mail’ tab of the location document) instead of through a Domino Server. This will cause the client to try to send mail to an smtp server and not route it through the Domino server.
Unless you have an account document set up that points to your Notes server, then the mail sits in the local smtp.box file. If this is the case, I would just change the setting on the location doc to send through the Domino Server instead. To get the previously sent mail to send, you can probably even just go into the smtp.box file, copy the pending messages, and paste them in the local mail.box file.
Subject: RE: Users can’t send mail when outside LAN
New and weird data point: I set Delivery Options to “Trace Entire Path” but got nothing back, even when a message was in fact delivered. It isn’t supposed to do that.
Subject: RE: Users can’t send mail when outside LAN
When in a “Server” based location, Notes transfers directly to the mail.box of the mail server without first storing it locally in the client’s mail.box.
It sounds like your users are working from a “Local” based location, which is configured to transfer mail to an SMTP server. That mail isn’t being delivered immediatly because transfers to the Internet mail host are handled by the Replicator. If scheduled replication is enabled the messages will be transferred at the next interval, if not the client will need to hit Start on the Replicator page or use the Send Outgoing Mail option in the Quickpick menu.
The lack of trace information makes sense in terms of Internet mail routing since it’s an internal function only, and messages sent to via the Internet will be treated as SMTP mail even if they are to recipients in your organization.
Subject: RE: Users can’t send mail when outside LAN
Suggestion from Usenet: the problem might be the braindead way Notes handles server name lookups: it stores an IP address in a hidden field in the Location document PERMANENTLY. Since I created the Location docs inside the firewall, it stored the internal IP and will use it forever.
Dumb, but fixable as soon as I have physical access to the machines again.
This explains why tracing to the box works, but replication doesn’t: trace doesn’t use the Location document.
Note to IBM: this is a terrible, terrible system. When a connection attempt fails, Notes should do another DNS lookup, not just fail inexplicably.