Duplicate mail. Problem solved, but question remain.

[sandhall]

Hi,

As a fresh plesk-user I experienced problems with qmail sending duplicate mail. Sometimes the same mail would be delivered 3-4 times.

I solved that problem. A cronjob running /usr/bin/qmail_check (belongs to the package a1dummy-psa753-1.1-1.swsoft) every 10 minutes caused qmail to exit. And when that happened during a mailtransfer qmail didn't clean the queue and the user would receive the same mail once again the next time qmail_check is run.

I disabled the cronjob and now qmail stays up all the time, delivering mail immediately (not once every 10 minutes, like before) and no duplicates. One would think this should be the preferred behaviour? But obiously, the previous behaivour is by design. And that makes me wonder why they have designed it this way?

 

[jamesyeeoc]

Actually, the base Plesk 7.5.3 does not include that rpm package that I have ever seen (a1dummy-psa753-1.1-1.swsoft), the only time I have seen that is on a VPS.

Someone please correct me if I'm wrong

 

[sandhall]

Yes, the "server" in question is a Virtuozzo VPS.

The package description says: "Dummy package to tune PSA and provide VZPP integration".

Files included:

/etc/rc.d/init.d/courier-imap-tune
/etc/stunnel/stunnel.conf-imapcourier
/etc/stunnel/stunnel.conf-pop3courier
/etc/xinetd.d/courier-imapd
/etc/xinetd.d/courier-imapds
/etc/xinetd.d/courier-pop3d
/etc/xinetd.d/courier-pop3ds
/usr/bin/qmail_check
/usr/share/a1dummy-psa753-1.1/a1dummy-psa753-file

Still can't see why one would want this qmail-behaviour though. VPS or no VPS. I'm sure there's a very good reason. I just can't see it.

 

[jamesyeeoc]

You may want to repost this in the Virtuozzo forum, you may get more answers there.

 

[Cranky]

I've had this problem too. It was designed to run every 10 minutes to check if qmail had anything to do. If not, it stops qmail to save resources on the VPS/node. After 10 mins it checks again and restarts only when required.

The script is buggy, and is now disabled on all my VPS'es. I've also checked with development and it's not going to be included in any future Plesk templates (from 7.5.4).

I wouldn't worry about it if you've disabled it, this is a good move.

 

[Swakoo]

Me too

Hi guys, sorry thought I piggy back on this topic to ask...

I have users complaining of repeated mails too at times.

I'm running Plesk Reloaded 7.5.3, and under "Crontab" in the Plesk Control Panel, I don't see any options refering to resetting qmail..

yet I have this problem.

While I suspect it may be the clien'ts email client software problem (Outlook), I am not overlooking the "possibility" that it may be Plesk too...

any advice?

 

[jamesyeeoc]

You should check your /usr/local/psa/var/log/maillog to find the entries related to when the duplicate/triplicates occur. You did not specify how frequently this is occurring, so searching the log file may be difficult if it only happens infrequently.

There could be a number of other things affecting email delivery, as you stated, Outlook (depending on version), as well as other Server side things such as anti-virus, spam filtering.

Is the server is 'pristine' condition, in other words, other than the Plesk installer and updater, has anything else been manually updated/added/changed? This includes the use of apt-get, up2date, and yum.

 

[Swakoo]

Originally posted by jamesyeeoc
You should check your /usr/local/psa/var/log/maillog to find the entries related to when the duplicate/triplicates occur. You did not specify how frequently this is occurring, so searching the log file may be difficult if it only happens infrequently.

There could be a number of other things affecting email delivery, as you stated, Outlook (depending on version), as well as other Server side things such as anti-virus, spam filtering.

Is the server is 'pristine' condition, in other words, other than the Plesk installer and updater, has anything else been manually updated/added/changed? This includes the use of apt-get, up2date, and yum.

I'm quite a noob to linux and server and such... but this server is new, and just house email and dns records and running plesk. thats all..

yah its quite adhoc kind of happening so its quite hard to pin down the exact problem