Message route between MTA and IMS 1

[cq]

For testing purposes I have set the Transfer Mode on my IMS to None (Flush Queues).
Now if I send a message from an internal mailbox to an external email address, it is not delivered (as I would expect) but I can't find where it is held.
Diag logging on the MTA shows that the message is added to the IMS 'transfer-in queue', but none of the four queues in the IMS have any entries, likewise the MTA queue for the IMS has no entries.

I know the messages are queued somewhere because if I set the IMS transfer mode back to inbound & outbound the messages are delivered.

Ideally, what I want to do is to see the held messages in the queue (so I know they have been 'sent') and then delete them. It is possible for me to catch them further down the line but this would be more error prone. There will be several thousand messages auto generated going to valid email addresses (no, I'm not a spammer!) so I really don't want them to escape.

Thanks

Pete

 

[zbnet]

If you look on your Server (using admin) in Private Information Store, Mailbox Restores, you will see a store object for the Internet Mail Service. This is a system mailbox that the IMS uses as a temporray holding area for messages, both inbound and outbound. This is the queueing area between the IMS and the MTA (the inside interface), the directories in IMCDATA on the disk are the outside (internet-side) interface.

If you were to open up the Internet Mail Serverce mailbox, you would find two virtual queues, folders called MTS-Out and MTS-In. Of course, you can't usually see these, as this isn't a mailbox you would ever open with Outlook, but thet are supposedly accessible with the mdbvu32.exe utility, if you were really intent on emptying them - not something one would normally make a habit of, though, in case it screwed up the working of the IMS.

 

[cq]

Top stuff zbnet! I've now found a section on mdbvu32 in an exchange book that shows how to access MTS-OUT and MTS-IN, you can delete queued messages from here while the IMS service is stopped, this is exactly what I need to do. Thanks for your help.