Messaging Gateway

I received the following message after I sent to my friend. However, my friend has already receive my message at the first time. WHAT HAPPEN TO MY BRIGHTMAIL GATEWAY??



####################################################################
# THIS IS A WARNING ONLY.  YOU DO NOT NEED TO RESEND YOUR MESSAGE. # ####################################################################

Your message could not be delivered for 1 days, 20 hours, 0 minutes.
It will be retried until it is 5 days, 0 hours, 0 minutes old.

For further assistance, please send mail to <postmaster>

If you do so, please include this problem report. You can delete your own text from the attached returned message.

<xxx@xxx.com>: 421 xxx.com Error: timeout exceeded

 

This is the expected behavior on SBG when an outbound message cannot be delivered and waits on the queue. In case a message cannot be delivered, SBG will retry to deliver the message after the first failure and will first notify the sender after the time value configured into the "Message delay time in queue before notification" option. By default this happens after 4 hours a message waits in the queue. The second notification will arrive after 3 times the preset value, so by default 12 hours after the first notification. Then, subsequent notifications will arrive after 4 times the value so every 16 hours until the message in the queue times out. This happens by default after 5 days as configured into the "Sent message time-out" option.

Symantec does not recommend to modify the default values unless strictly necessary or advised by Symantec Support.
If you need to change the frequency of these notifications or the time-out value via the User Interface go to Administration > Hosts > Configuration > <scannerhostname> > SMTP tab.
At the bottom of the page click the Advanced Settings button. These values can be configured under the SMTP Delivery Configuration section.

http://service1.symantec.com/support/ent-gate.nsf/854fa02b4f5013678825731a007d06af/b72a84160178c728802576b8005501c6?OpenDocument

"timeout exceeded" incidates that there is some sort of network issue between your SBG and your friend's receiving mail server.  Please answer a few questions to understand the issue better:

How big is the message? 

Does the message contain any attachments? 

Are you able to send any other messages successfully to your friend?

Are there other messages in the delivery queue with the same "timeout exceeded" error message?

Are you saying that the your friend has already receiced a copy of the message that is still sitting in the delivery queue?  If that's the case, then this issue needs further investigation by support.  I suggest you contact support and provide them debug level maillog and a packet capture while flushing that message from the queue.

Regards,

Adnan

Can you please respond to my questions above?  Has the issue been resolved?

Thanks

Adnan

Adnan,

Can you pl let us know when the mails are not delivered then where its stuck and where we can delete this mail from brightmail, so the same again and again the notification will not sent to users.

Regards,
Mansoor

Even we search in queue and in message tracking bt did not find any message.

We're getting delivery failure notices and we've already set the SBG to reject incoming mails and there are no messages in queue. Ang we have just recently stopped the MTA just to be sure. This is a backup appliance and should not receive emails from the company's domain.

I went and modified the settings:
Admin > hosts > configuration > [server name] > SMTP tab
clicked on 'Advanced settings' at the bottom.
Under SMTP delivery config
I changed the following values:
Minimum retry interval: 30 minutes (from 15 minutes)
Sent message time-out: 2 days (from 5 days)

I'm not sure when it will take effect - if a message was sent 4 days ago, will it retry for another 2 days or will it stop?

Please take a look at this kb artilce it will explain you how exactly this feature is working.

http://service1.symantec.com/support/ent-gate.nsf/854fa02b4f5013678825731a007d06af/939f57220b532e468825772900709255?OpenDocument

Also please also be aware that restarting MTA , manually flushing queues cn also alter this algorithm.

Hope this is helpful.