Unable to receive mail

[desmur]

HELP, all of a sudden, we are unable to receive outside
e-mail. We can send and receive internal all day long, we can even send to the outside. WE just can't receive. We are running exchange 5.5 with service pack 4 on a 2000 server.

 

[SureshMukhi]

This has happened to us before, there are two things you need to check:

1. Server Space, if the space is low, the Exchange Server services stop without any warning. Free up some space and then restart the services.

2. If you have enough space, restart all Microsoft Exchange Services.

Worst case, restart your server.

Hope this helps. Suresh Mukhi

 

[nocspec]

Make sure that your domain registration has not expired. On a daily basis I come across clients who are running a mail server and come to find out, their domain registration had run out. The symptom you are describing, where you are able to send and receive internally fine, however sending out is a problem, may indicate the domain has in fact expired. Be sure to go to your sites registrar for the most up to date information

 

[psiinc]

I am running 5.5 with sp4 and the registration seems to be fine. Everything was working until Monday then all of a sudden we can't receive outside mail. I can send and receive fine internally and send outside as well but I cant receive any imcoming mail. I am getting this error message in regards to outside messages...

<user@domain.ca> user@domain.ca
MSEXCH:IMS:&quot;organization&quot;:&quot;domain&quot;:&quot;mail server&quot; 0
(00120345) Too Many Hops

Any suggestions? Help...

 

[Marcs41]

Always check with your ISP first! They can test this. _{If 'something' 'somewhere' gives 'some' error, excpect random guesses or no replies at all. Please specify details.
Free Tip: The F1 Key does NOT destroy your PC! - Marc}

 

[nocspec]

Couple of things to check:
1. Can you telnet to port 110? If not then the port is closed or not accepting connections for some reason.
2. What kind of info is in the logs? Is there any indication that the mail is being accepted and queued by the server?
3. Bounce backs can tell the whole story. When you send an email to the mail server, does it produce a bounce back with the error message?
4. Do you have a backup service provider if the server goes done? What is the time that they have allotted for their server to relay the messages before they send a bounce back to the sender?

 

[Gersen]

When we've had this problem, several things helped:

If you're Exchange Server is running behind a firewall or proxy server, check that your DNS server has an MX record pointing to that gateway address. For instance, our Exchange server is at 10.0.0.5, and I had to make an MX record that instead pointed to our Proxy servef at 10.0.0.11

Make sure your Exchange server can resolve names on the Internet. Get the &quot;restest.exe&quot; utility from Microsoft and try &quot;restest microsoft.com&quot; from a command prompt. You should get a response showing Microsoft's mail server addresses.

hope you solve it.

Gersen

 

[desmur]

Thanks for all your help, the problem has been solved. It turns out that one of our other servers had a setting in it that was stopping the mail.

 

[Gersen]

There's a MS KB article that should help you isolate the problem. It's KB article 191548, but for some reason I can't get it to load at the moment.

G.

 

[Gersen]

Was it another machine running an SMTP service? We had that. About drove me to drink.

G.

 

[psiinc]

My ISP had an A record and MX record for me and as I mentioned up until Monday it was working. I ended up doing a couple of things since to fix the problem...

I have DNS running on a domain controller pointing to itself obviously and use forwarding for any addresses it can't resolve pointing to my ISP but I didn't have an MX record for the mail server which incidentally is the same system. So I added an MX record with a preference 10 for my Mail/DNS Server and then added another MX record for my ISP with a preference 20. I also removed the SMTP service from IIS. Not sure which addressed the problem but it's working now. I'm guessing it was the MX record but I had come across a newsgroup that made mention of these things. I'm still a little baffled why it was working fine and then I had to make the changes but all is well for now.

 

[psiinc]

Now to upgrade to Exchange 2000!!? Different thread I suppose.

 

[Marcs41]

yes please, and read thread858-474481 before that. _{If 'something' 'somewhere' gives 'some' error, excpect random guesses or no replies at all. Please specify details.
Free Tip: The F1 Key does NOT destroy your PC! - Marc}