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Lynda Leung Author

Level 1

0 points

Mavericks mail server stops distributing group email after a few hours of usage

I've been having problems with our Mavericks mail server ever since our upgrade with group mail.

The server will distribute group email for a few hour, then it simply stops working.
No error message, no bounces, and the server keeps the incoming mail in its incoming queue.

Restarting the mail services by either server.app or serveradmin mail stop; serveradmin mail start command like are the only way I can get it to continue to distribute the email. I suspect it has to do with postfix itself hiccuping? But this is a reproducable problem.

Mail filtering is on, score set to 6, 10 mb limit, spamhaus is active.

Looking for tips on how to stablize this service short of setting up cron job to restart the services every few hours.

Mac mini, OS X Mavericks (10.9), OpenLDAP and Server.app user

Posted on Nov 1, 2013 10:43 AM

40 replies

Jan 13, 2014 1:22 PM in response to Lynda Leung

I'm assuming it is the list_server_mgr that is actually hanging and not the entire mail system. An alternate route versus taking down the entire mail system to restart it on a scheduled interval, would be to just unload/load that process:

0 */6 * * * /Applications/Server.app/Contents/ServerRoot/usr/sbin/serverctl disable service=com.apple.list_server_mgr >> /var/log/mail-stop-start.log ; /Applications/Server.app/Contents/ServerRoot/usr/sbin/serverctl disable service=com.apple.list_server_mgr >> /var/log/mail-stop-start.log

I'll be testing on a Mavericks server that we are seeing this issue to confirm that this fixes.

Jan 14, 2014 9:18 AM in response to Eric Shaheen

Well after testing, it looks like the whole mail system needs to be restarted to temporarily fix the issue. We have noticed that it only seems to occur on messages that have attachments...

Feb 13, 2014 5:55 PM in response to Lynda Leung

Add me to the list. Over the course of the work day, my group mailing lists largely let my company down as the messages get stuck. Restarting the mail service seems to eventually release them from the queue. It's amazing how unreliable this really is. And none of my problem emails are large or include any attachments. This is happening with small plain text emails. Hope Apple fixes this soon.

Miggl

Level 1

89 points

Feb 18, 2014 10:47 AM in response to emeraldcityeg

Adding myself here as well to get updated when a resolution arrives. Thanks for providing the AppleScript work-around to at least get us through the next few months! 🙂

Stirliz

Level 1

1 points

Feb 26, 2014 9:59 AM in response to Lynda Leung

3.0.3 came out today, nothing about the group addresses in the patchnote, but did anyone test if it works?

Miggl

Level 1

89 points

Feb 26, 2014 12:15 PM in response to Stirliz

Seems to be working so far. I disabled the work-around-script since updating, and have been getting mail on the group accounts (been running for over 3 hours now).

Feb 26, 2014 5:53 PM in response to Lynda Leung

I just disabled my workaround cron task. Fingers crossed...

Lynda Leung Author

Level 1

0 points

Feb 27, 2014 12:53 AM in response to emeraldcityeg

Looks like it wasn't fixed. Group distribution is still broken for me..

Feb 27, 2014 5:21 AM in response to Philip GW

Sorry to ask, but anyone have open a case with Apple Support on this one, is this really a bug or a misconfiguration in mail server ? Philip GM any come back from Apple Entrprise support ???

Thanks !!

Feb 27, 2014 7:40 AM in response to Lynda Leung

Yup, no dice here either. No change from the previous version.

What do we need to do to wake Apple up on this one? This is the most unstable server product I've ever worked with, and I've administered all sorts of products built for much bigger tasks/workloads.

Stirliz

Level 1

1 points

Mar 18, 2014 1:44 AM in response to Lynda Leung

3.1 is now out, patchnote is silent about the fixes again

did anybody test the update?

Stirliz

Level 1

1 points

Mar 18, 2014 6:01 AM in response to Stirliz

Nevermind. Updated, doesn't fix the problem. This is becoming really annoying. Got the feeling that Apple itself doesn't use its own server app, otherwise they would have fixed the issue pretty quick.

Not sure if it fixed the message size problem, cause i used this solution to fix it before: https://discussions.apple.com/thread/5508396?start=0&tstart=0

Lynda Leung Author

Level 1

0 points

Mar 20, 2014 12:26 AM in response to Lynda Leung

FYI, I've verified Server 3.1 did NOT fixed this problem.
You will need to continue using the restart crontab script in order to keep your mail services running.

Apr 1, 2014 7:19 AM in response to Lynda Leung

I am having a similar problem, where can I locate this crontab script?

FromOZ

Level 3

554 points

Apr 6, 2014 12:54 AM in response to curriebwoi

curriebwoi wrote:

I am having a similar problem, where can I locate this crontab script?

See Lynda's post earlier

This is how I worked around it. create a crontab as root to reset the service every 6 hours. Best if you use a number divisible by 24 for obvious reasons.

use this single line entry:
0 */6 * * * /Applications/Server.app/Contents/ServerRoot/usr/sbin/serveradmin stop mail >> /dev/null ; /Applications/Server.app/Contents/ServerRoot/usr/sbin/serveradmin start mail >> /dev/null

Mavericks mail server stops distributing group email after a few hours of usage