GroupWise 5.5 Very Slow Mail delivery

[JulesBirch]

I am running GroupWise 5.5 on NetWare SBS 5.1. There is only one Server on the network and it also runs GroupWise.

I have a problem with some E mails that can take 24 hours to be delivered to certain addresses. There are quite a large number of addresses that do not seem to receive E Mails sent out from GroupWise so I don’t believe that the problem lies with the recipient of the E mails.

The recipients of these E Mails claim that they normally receive E mails from other senders within 20 minutes.

E Mail coming in to GroupWise seems to arrive within a couple of minutes of being sent. Internal GroupWise E mail works well and delivery is very fast – usually within 2 minutes of sending.

I have run a GroupWise database check on the Post Office and the report indicates that all databases are structurally consistent.

However, looking at the GWIA log on the console, there are a large number of 450MX lookup failures.

I have checked the RESOLV.CFG and HOSTS files and they contain the correct information.

Can anyone suggest how to troubleshoot this?

Regards

Jules

 

[ITsmyfault]

the mx lookup errors are errors in finding the mx record for the destination domain. Does your workstation use the same DNS server as your groupwise server? if not, set it up to. once that's ready, try running an nslookup on the domain.

for ex:

C:\>nslookup
Default Server: DNS2.mydomain.com
Address: <some ip address>

> set querytype=mx
> yahoo.com
Server: DNS2.mydomain.com
Address: <some IP address>

Non-authoritative answer:
yahoo.com MX preference = 1, mail exchanger = mx3.mail.yahoo.com
yahoo.com MX preference = 5, mail exchanger = mx4.mail.yahoo.com
yahoo.com MX preference = 1, mail exchanger = mx1.mail.yahoo.com
yahoo.com MX preference = 1, mail exchanger = mx2.mail.yahoo.com

etc etc. If that works fine (I'm guessing it will), try opening a session with the remote server. telnet to port 25 of that remote server and try to send them an email. I snagged this from a website. C is client (you) insert the correct FQDN's for the servers involved..

S: 220 localhost Dumbster SMTP service ready
2 C: EHLO WKS-JKITCHEN
3 S: 250 OK
4 C: MAIL FROM:<sender@here.com>
5 S: 250 OK
6 C: RCPT TO:<receiver@there.com>
7 S: 250 OK
8 C: DATA
9 S: 354 Start mail input; end with <CRLF>.<CRLF>
10 C:
11 C: .
12 S: 250 OK
13 C: QUIT

If the remote server is set up to use a PTR record (reverse DNS lookup) you will not be able to run this test as your PC probably has no PTR record in your domains DNS. Make sure your GWIA agent IP does have a PTR record, and that the setting in console one matches it - so if the DNS is gw.mydomain.com, that is what it should say in NWAdmin. Many servers get 'mad' if these don't match - and they should match if you're a legit site.

Also, go to dnsreport.com and test yourself and the remote domain to see if there are any intersting issues which could be causing your problems.

The mail is probably taking 24 hours bc Groupwise by default (IIRC) will keep retrying for 4 days to send mail when there is a sending error like this. This is in case the remote server is busy or down. You can also set this rety period in NWAdmin to be less if you prefer.

Make sure your GWIA is logging in verbose mode, and check the logs as you send emails to see the errors and what is going on. Send test emails and monitor them. Talk to the email admin on the distant end to see what they are using, and how they are set up wrt anti-spam, etc.

that's probably enough for now! gd lk! troubleshooting email issues is always a good time.