Messaging Gateway

Hi,

We currently have 2 SMS for SMTP gateways in our environment for perimeter mail transfer and are experiencing a strange issue relative to whatever internal process checks the "SMS Agent" service which is the MTA service. It seems that every 2 - 3 weeks on each gateway the Brightmail system reports our MTA to be down on those systems. The alert emails occur every hour since the first instance is reported but the thing is that the "SMS Agent" service on both gateways is still running and mail flow is totally unaffected, the only thing that has changed is that the MTA is reported as down in the Host Status section of the Brightmail Admin Site. A restart of the Agent service fixes the status reporting and the alerts stop until 2 - 3 weeks later again.

Since this kept re-occurring i enabled debug logging on our gateways and it seems that when this problem occurs these errors are reported constantly until the SMS Agent service is bounced:

2009-04-11T09:30:29+02:00 (ERROR:784.832): [43037] Could not execute script (D:\Symantec\SMSSMTP\common\sbin\pause-mode.bat status ): system error 0.
2009-04-11T09:37:29+02:00 (ERROR:784.828): [43037] Could not execute script (D:\Symantec\SMSSMTP\common\sbin\mta-control.bat -x D:\Symantec\SMSSMTP\logs\script_1239435449443.txt inbound status ): system error 0.
2009-04-11T09:37:29+02:00 (ERROR:784.836): [43037] Could not execute script (D:\Symantec\SMSSMTP\common\sbin\mta-control.bat -x D:\Symantec\SMSSMTP\logs\script_1239435449474.txt outbound status ): system error 0.
2009-04-11T09:37:29+02:00 (ERROR:784.832): [43037] Could not execute script (D:\Symantec\SMSSMTP\common\sbin\mta-control.bat -x D:\Symantec\SMSSMTP\logs\script_1239435449505.txt delivery status ): system error 0.

The bat file mentioned runs a vb script in the same dir that checks on the service status which must be reported back to some process somewhere but since the error is stating that the script could not be executed then i assume the status is not being reported back to that process which then thinks the MTA Agent is down. Even the attempt to write the status to a log file fails via the other bat file with the same error.

Can anyone tell me why SMS for SMTP is kicking off this error every 2 - 3 weeks as restarting the service is getting old. I don`t wish to write a script to restart the service when this happens as that is a workaround and doesn`t solve the issue at hand.

FYI we are running Windows 2000 Server Professional if that makes a difference.

If anyone can help that would be great.

Thanks,

Chris Murchison

Looks like you did your homework! :)

This looks similar to an issue that we were having with earlier versions of the product. Are you to the latest build and patch?

Please verify that you are to the latest 5.0.1 build and to patch 201. You can get the patch at the following address:
ftp://ftp.symantec.com/public/english_us_canada/products/symantec_mail_security/5.0.1_smtp/updates/

Thanks!

Hi,

Sorry for the late reply. Thanks for the response i`ll be back in work on Monday so i`ll check the version and patch level for the product then. I`ll install the latest patch if it isn`t up to date.

Thanks. 

Hi,

I`ve now patched up the systems to build 201. I`ll just have to play the waiting game to see if the issue arises again.

Thanks again for the link to the patch repo.

Chris.