Non Delivery of Mails

[kamire]

I have a problem with my Exchange 5.5 where if someone from one of our regional offices sends mail some guys receive the mail while others goes to a black hole. Where they do not receive the mails and does not bounce. It does not just reach its destination.

I would like someone to help me with this since it is becoming a problem and this office is being officially opened next week. It is a very important office. It has its own exchange 5.5 and does have its own domain registration.

I am really crying for help.

 

[Gafer]

How are messages routed between the two Exchange servers, via an Exchange connector or out via the public internet ?

 

[kamire]

The two exchange are via a public internet and when I telnet to that firewall and go to the sendmail. I cannot see these mails passing into the sendmail when a user sends mail to various users but pass for others. They can also receive from all users on my side of the exchange. So I believe that this Exchange is sending these mails to a black hole.

Please help so that I can tell someone of the other end on what to do.

 

[Gafer]

Do you have message tracking enabled on both servers, if not then you should enable it on the IS, the IMS and the MTA which will allow us to do some basic message tracking. To make sure I correctly understand the problem you have the following situation:

You have an Exchange server with a domain of @adomain.com and you are sending messages to your other Exchange server, using a seperate domain of @bdomain.com, via the IMS/Public internet. Some messages are delivered to some people at the second server but some do not and no non-delivery recipts are issued with the messages just seeming to disappear. Other than mail there are no "connections" between the two Exchange servers i.e. No directory replication or anything like that.

Is my understanding correct ?

 

[kamire]

It is like an independent site. If the user send and copies various people some people receive others do not. At this point there is only the mail passing to the person who will receive which is passed to the Linux sendmail others are not passed to Linux sendmail to relay. It is like it goes to a sort of black hole on the Exchange server.

All the loggings are enabled.

 

[Gafer]

The Linux sendmail shouldn't have anything to do with this because all it will do is to receive the mail and say "okay that's for @bdomain.com I need to send this on to this address" and unless it's doing something "strange" it will just pass the message on as one message no matter how many people it is address to, as they are all members of the same domain.

Using message tracking have you been able to confirm that the messages have been received correctly and are addressed to the correct recipients ?

Also something else to try is to change the Diagnostics Logging on both of the IMS's so that both "Message Transfer" and "SMTP Interface Events" are set to medium. This will then get the IMS to write events into the Application event log which you can use to make sure that message delivery is correctly taking place with the correct number of recipients delivered.

 

[kamire]

All the loggings are on. I will tell the ISP guy in that country to check for me before I can travel to go and fix it.