John Harmon wrote: > I have seen this on 2 different servers now. Here are the configurations: > > SERVER 1: > Fedora Core 3 > Apache 2.0.x > PHP 4x > MySQL 4x > Latest stuff per Bill's toaster shupp.org/toaster > > SERVER 2: > OpenSuse 10.2 > Apache 2-2.2.3-20 > PHP 5x > MySQL 5x > Latest stuff per Bill's toaster shupp.org/toaster > > SYMPTOMS: > Often, when sending emails with attachments (around a few MB or larger) > or particularly when forwarding such emails from a client (such as > Thunderbird) I get the following error after the sending progress bar > reaches 100%: > "Sending of message failed. > The message could not be sent because connecting to SMTP server > mail.myserver.com failed. The server may be unavailable or is refusing > SMTP connections. Please verify that your SMTP server setting is > correct and try again, or else contact your network administrator." > > After clicking on "OK" to close the error message you close the email > and it asks you to save it (as it thinks it is an unsent email). I > typically just don't save it and close it. Despite the error, the email > does get sent and arrives at its destination. > > Is this a timeout issue on the SMTP settings? Is there some reason > qmail is timing out or closing the connection (if that is the case)? > Anything I can do about that or any other ideas as to what may be > causing this? or how to fix it?
I get sporadic reports like this from time to time, yet I can *never* reproduce it. I suspect that the MUA is timing out before the SMTP process completes, yet the sending of the message was successful. This timeout is probably caused by a delay of either DNS lookups (common recently when ordb.org went under and people didn't remove it from their smtpd run file), or slow scanning via spamd/clamd. Those are the first places I'd look. Regards, Bill
