Internal Mails Stop Working After a While

[mintra]

Hello,

have a Zimbra Ver2 Mail server setup behind a firewall.
Mail keeps getting stuck in the postfix mail queue


The server is on a private IP address the firewall is on a public ip address.

The following ports are forwarded to the private ip,

Zimbra_Admin 7071

Zimbra_HTTP 80

Zimbra_HTTPS 443

Zimbra_SMTP 25

Zimbra_SSH 22

Zimbra_IMAP 143

Zimbra_IMAPS 993

Zimbra_POPS 995

Zimbra_POP 110

Zimbra_LDAP 389

Zimbra_Contr 7777

Zimbra_?? 7025

The /etc/hosts file has
127.0.0.1 for the ip address of the domain name

when the server is first started, everything works as expected.

after a couple hours running, the local mail stops getting delivered, with this error message in the zimbra.log

status=deferred (connect to domain.com[123.123publicip]: read timeout)

'zmcontrol status' shows everything as running.

server shows 200~300 mb free memory

when I try to do a postqueue -f (Flush queue) get the same timeout errors.

Only way to fix it is to do a zmcontrol stop, zmcontrol start, then postqueue -f this then delivers the mails

I don't understand why this is happening.

[mintra]

Some users are also reporting an error message in the email client.

They are using Outlook Express, get error, Your IMAP Server has stopped responding.

Would this be related at all?

[KevinH]

Some users are also reporting an error message in the email client.

They are using Outlook Express, get error, Your IMAP Server has stopped responding.

Would this be related at all?

Maybe. What's in /opt/zimbra/tomcat/log/catalina.out? Everytime you do a zmcontrol stop/start folks will get this error since your stoping tomcat which serves as both the mailbox and IMAP/POP server.

BTW: How many users are on the system right now?

[KevinH]

status=deferred (connect to domain.com[123.123publicip]: read timeout)

Can you post more of the logs. Also what does this return?

host domain.com

Does it give you the local IP or the public IP?

[mintra]

Thanks KevinH,

you are on the ball !

The Catalina log shows this,

zmtomcatstart: info: stale pid 27007 in pid file: No such process
Dec 1, 2005 4:09:05 PM org.apache.coyote.http11.Http11Protocol init
INFO: Initializing Coyote HTTP/1.1 on http-80
Dec 1, 2005 4:09:06 PM org.apache.coyote.http11.Http11Protocol init
INFO: Initializing Coyote HTTP/1.1 on http-443
Dec 1, 2005 4:09:06 PM org.apache.coyote.http11.Http11Protocol init
INFO: Initializing Coyote HTTP/1.1 on http-7071
Dec 1, 2005 4:09:06 PM org.apache.catalina.startup.Catalina load
INFO: Initialization processed in 1925 ms
Dec 1, 2005 4:09:06 PM org.apache.catalina.core.StandardService start
INFO: Starting service Catalina
Dec 1, 2005 4:09:06 PM org.apache.catalina.core.StandardEngine start
INFO: Starting Servlet Engine: Apache Tomcat/5.5.7
Dec 1, 2005 4:09:06 PM org.apache.catalina.core.StandardHost start
INFO: XML validation disabled
Dec 1, 2005 4:09:06 PM org.apache.catalina.startup.HostConfig deployWAR
INFO: Deploying web application archive service.war
log4j:WARN No appenders could be found for logger (org.apache.catalina.session.ManagerBase).
log4j:WARN Please initialize the log4j system properly.
Zimbra server reserving server socket port=110 bindaddr=null
Zimbra server reserving server socket port=995 bindaddr=null
Zimbra server reserving server socket port=143 bindaddr=null
Zimbra server reserving server socket port=993 bindaddr=null
Zimbra server process is running as root, changing to user=zimbra uid=500 gid500
Zimbra server process, after change, is running with uid=500 euid=500 gid=500 egid=500
Dec 1, 2005 4:09:13 PM org.apache.catalina.startup.HostConfig deployWAR
INFO: Deploying web application archive zimbraAdmin.war
Dec 1, 2005 4:09:13 PM org.apache.catalina.core.ApplicationContext log
INFO: org.apache.webapp.balancer.BalancerFilter: init(): ruleChain: [org.apache.webapp.balancer.RuleChain: [org.apache.webapp.balancer.rules.URLStringMatchRule: Target string: News / Redirect URL: http://www.cnn.com], [org.apache.webapp.balancer.rules.RequestParameterRule: Target param name: paramName / Target param value: paramValue / Redirect URL: http://www.yahoo.com], [org.apache.webapp.balancer.rules.AcceptEverythingRule: Redirect URL: http://jakarta.apache.org]]
Dec 1, 2005 4:09:13 PM org.apache.coyote.http11.Http11Protocol start
INFO: Starting Coyote HTTP/1.1 on http-80
Dec 1, 2005 4:09:13 PM org.apache.coyote.http11.Http11Protocol start
INFO: Starting Coyote HTTP/1.1 on http-443
Dec 1, 2005 4:09:13 PM org.apache.coyote.http11.Http11Protocol start
INFO: Starting Coyote HTTP/1.1 on http-7071
Dec 1, 2005 4:09:13 PM org.apache.catalina.startup.Catalina start
INFO: Server startup in 7923 ms

[mintra]

[zimbra@mail ~]$ host domain.com
domain.com has address public_ip_address

[mintra]

There are only a dozen users on this system.

it's running with a P4 @ 2.8ghz and 768mb ram (200mb-300mb free)

[mintra]

Interesting thing is LocalMail delivery is trying to deliver to the public IP address, and host domain.com returns the public ip address, but a PING domain.com returns (127.0.0.1)

[dkarp]

Some users are also reporting an error message in the email client. They are using Outlook Express, get error, Your IMAP Server has stopped responding.

One possibility: Make sure that the number of IMAP threads is sufficient to handle the number of active connections. (Each IMAP client may open multiple connections simultaneously, so don't be overly stingy here.) You can configure this number in the admin UI; it requires a tomcat server restart to take effect.

[KevinH]

Interesting thing is LocalMail delivery is trying to deliver to the public IP address, and host domain.com returns the public ip address, but a PING domain.com returns (127.0.0.1)

It's best if you have the DNS lookup return you local IP. In small networks this will require you to have a local dns installed on your Zimbra system.