Wake up the smtpd of Raptor 6.5.3 before sent mail

[dennisfck]

I have a Raptor 6.5.3 on window NT 4.0 with sp6a in testing environment. Normally, the smtp traffic is quite low comparing with http or others. But I found that, when I want to send mail from external to internal. The mail can't send smoothly. I try to use a command "Telnet 202.x.y.z 25" for trouble shooting. The message of the exchange server will be displayed after a few minutes. I asked my vendor, he said may be the smtpd is slept. You must wake up it before send mail. Who have this experience?

 

[captnstiles]

Network Enities: I have a host setup for my mail server
You need 2 rule sets:
1 to allow incoming mail From the universe
2 to allow outgoing mail out the the universe
Then you need to setup a redirector for mail(smtp) to your host.
Do not for get to setup the Daemons for SMTP gateway you can check tracing to help you trobleshoot along with the logs. Email me if you need more. bob_stiles@yahoo.com

 

[dennisfck]

Hi bob,

Thanks your reply. I have already created two rules for incoming and outgoing and also have a redirect service for incoming mail. It only occur in testing environment. In my production network, no such case is occured. It is very interest to us and my vendor.

 

[captnstiles]

I was wondering did we ever find out how to wake the SMTP daemon before the email is sent? This almost sounds like a bug with that release, is Symantec aware of this problem? I currently have not seen this problem even in a test environment.

 

[HamishS]

Hi Dennis,

I have had alot of experience with the smtp dameon in raptor, I have two raptor 6.5 firewalls that I administer, and one 7.0 on WIN2k, first things first, has your firewall been loaded with the bugfix for using sp6a?
I`n guessing yes as its 6.5.3, and not just 6.5.He`s an except from the release notes anyway:
CAUTION: It is recommended that you use Microsoft NT 4.0 Service Pack 5 with the Raptor Firewall V6.5 and PowerVPN Server V6.5. Service Pack 4 is still supported with this release. Service Pack 6A is also supported but has been found to have a bug, reference #Q254930, that can interfere with the performance of your Raptor product causing packets to remain in a FIN_WAIT state. If you want to use Service Pack 6A, a work-around for this problem is included in the product kit.

There are also alot of patches for the firewall available, they are very hard to find though, I had to go to a chinese Symantec site to get them, though I can`t remember if there is a patch for the smtpd, I know there is one for the dnsd, ftpd, cifsd, pingd tcpap_gsp and udp_gsp, to name a few.
As far as I know, you should not have to "wake up" the smtp dameon, this is achived by enabling the smtp dameon in the proxy services, which you would have done, it works as a simple clear transfer agent, and is not much more intelligent than that.
Sometimes the proxy services don`t work correctly given the sheer load, give the box a reboot to fix this.
One of the firewalls I have transfers around 10,000 emais a day, but this started to produce Dr Watson errors and freeze up.
To get around this, I had to point smtp traffic through a newer box using WIN2k and raptor 7.0, I have had no problems with the new box.

Hope my babble helps.

 

[dennisfck]

Hi HamishS,

Thanks your reply. I set a period mail batch job to keep the smtpd always up.