Message Delay

[XofCDe3rd]

Hello

I have a member server running exchange 2003, recently we have been getting delayed message delivery messages. upon looking in the message queues I see all recently sent messages still awaiting delivery.

I found that a reboot of the domain controller sends these emails on their way. This is rather annoying cause in the case an important email gets stuck in the queue

Event logs on the exchange box show nothing in particular refering to this problem, esp. from the exchange services

I have a knack it may be a problem with communication between the exchange box and the dc or I could be wrong???

thanking in advance

 

[penguinroundup]

sounds like a DNS issue on the DC. can you use nslookup to query for MX records? what are the DNS server settings on the Exchange server set to?

 

[XofCDe3rd]

thank you causemaker you got that part right, my nslookup returned a time out on our mail domain name. even though the dns record for it is hosted by our isp. Somehow I am not supposed to recieve a time out but another error from what I have read up on the internet

Also when I tried to ping the dc from the exchange box eg. ping example.local throws an error giving the wrong address 192.168.40.0 when the true address is 192.168.40.1

when looking into the queued messages in system manager I see that it is unable to resolve because of the above

it is at this point that a reboot of the dc is the not so very nice solution.

I know somethings real wrong with the DNS setup but I am fairly new to AD so I am stumped

Ta all in Advance

 

[BenChristian]

Are the messages that are queuing for external delivery, internal delivery or both?

You're right about something being wrong with your DNS. It sounds like the 192.168.40.0 record is overwriting the DC's A record. When you restart the domain controller it it will re-register it's A and SRV records which would explain why restarting the DC fixes the issue. You'll probably find that restarting the netlogon service on the DC will acheive the same result without having to do a full reboot.

You need to investigate where the 192.168.40.0 record is coming from.

http://www.benchristian.com

 

[XofCDe3rd]

external delivery is affected internal works just fine

thanks benchristian I will look into that and let you know

ta all in advance