Random messages stuck in mqueue

[James]

Corey McFadden wrote:
>
> Guys,
>
> We're experiencing an issue on one of our boxes where messages (a good 
> percentage) are hung in /var/spool/mqueue after being processed by 
> MailScanner.  Even those to be delivered locally will sit for 
> (sometimes) hours until they're finally delivered.
>
> I've never seen this behavior before and something is definitely awry.
>
> Here's the environment:
>
> This is CentOS release 4.5 (Final)
> This is Perl version 5.008008 (5.8.8)
>
> This is MailScanner version 4.61.7
>
> Executing 'sendmail -q -v' WILL process the stuck messages but can 
> take quite a long time to run because it will try to deliver 
> everything queued in a linear fashion.
>
> Here's a good example of a message hung for more than 10 minutes:
>
> [root at ewrgga-hst01 mqueue]# cat qfl714YqCD027817
> V8
> T1185942893
> K0
> N0
> P32072
> Fbs
> <snip>
>
> This is pretty typical of the messages hung.  In this case it's 
> waiting to be delivered to a local "spamtrap" mailbox.
>
> Can anyone offer me any ideas to troubleshoot this?  I've not been too 
> successful hunting so far today.
>
> Thanks in advance!
> -Corey
Actually I have seen this before where the messages sit in the queue, 
delivery is attempted and failed then retry and it seems to be a loop. 
This has been caused by some firewalls. I cant say exactly why and I do 
know that for some reason some recipents will be able to recieve and 
others not, but its worth looking at. If there is another network device 
between the boxes try to dissable any "fancy" featues then give a power 
cycle or remove it all together. If the messages are not able to be 
delivered to the local machine itself, then you may have some hardware 
problem.