Topic: Tracking email through logs.

[Cyrus Bharda]

Hello everyone,

I am in a dilly of a pickle, I have one user telling me that she sometimes gets emails, but the attchments are missing, after checking her email client, I ruled it out, now I checked 3 logs, the rav, the qmail and the smtpfront-qmail logs.

All showed that this email was delivered successfully so I am stuffed if I know what is happening.

What i would like to know is is there somewhere a map of the process of recieveing mail, proccessing mail, and then sending mail from the server?

Something like this:

Internet - sender
sends to
RAV - SME
sends to
smtpfront-qmail -SME
sends to
qmail - SME
sends to
email client - reciever

Then I can look at the logs in a logical order to determine where an email is getting dropped/bounced/lost/etc

Thanks,

Cyrus Bharda

[Dean Mumby]

Hi Cyrus

Just a quick tip , it may not work. If your clients are using M$ Outlook
Select the email then click File ...> Save Attachments ...> None
And you will most likely find the attachment. This problem is a result of M$ not being able to maintain any sort of consistancy between version of Outlook.

I am not aware of any real solution.

Regards
Dean

[nef kho]

Hi Cyrus,

if your client is using outlook 2002, by default it block some files with a certain extention for protection , but you can used an add-on to enable outlook to open those extension.

you can find at:  http://www.slovaktech.com/attachmentoptions.htm

hope this one help.

nef

[Ray Mitchell]

Cyrus Bharda wrote:
> I have one user telling me that
> she sometimes gets emails, but the attchments are missing,
> after checking her email client, I ruled it out,

Cyrus
For monitoring & problem resolution purposes, you could include your account name or forwarding email address in her user account (deliver locally & forward to...), and then when she complains that an atachment is missing you could check your copy of the same email message to see if the attachment is there.
This may help to isolate the problem, and see if the attachment is really attached anyway by the sender.
Ray

[Cyrus Bharda]

Dean, Nef and Ray,

Thanks, but someone out there has to have some idea on which programs handle emails and in which order?!?!

Dean - the problem is that no attachments are shown by OE, tried saving in that manner and did not work, but thanks for the suggestion.

Nef - No it is not Outlook, but that com add-on looks like it will be very handy in the future when I do start running into those sorts of problems, thanks.

Ray - Good thinking, never thought of that, might give it a go and see what happens.

Thanks for all help guys!

Cyrus Bharda

[rick]

What email program is being used by the client? And what attachment types are missing

[Ray Mitchell]

Cyrus

A few clues here, maybe you already know it.
http://www.e-smith.org/docs/papers/smeserver-security.html#e-mail
http://www.e-smith.org/docs/papers/smeserver-security.html#appa

Server manager - Administration - Mail log file analysis panel may be useful for tracking mail issues

For managing mail queues the nice qmHandle rpm from contribs.org Darrell May site may also be useful. Thanks to Graeme for pointing this one out to me.

Ray

[Cyrus Bharda]

Rick,

Outlook Express 6 with all the latest patches/updates/crap from M$

The attachments are xls files, excel files

Ray,

Well another mail was sent and like you suggested I added my mailbox to the users deliver locally and forward to, and I did not get the attachment either, and I use Eudora lite, all the logs say that the attachment came through but it does not end up that way in the mailbox, this only happens from one single domain, if the email is sent to a third party and then forwarded here it comes through fine, curiouser and curiouser!!

Cyrus Bharda

[Cyrus]

Sorry to drag this up again, but found a great map of how qmail works:

http://www.nrg4u.com/qmail/the-big-qmail-picture-103-a4.pdf
(right click, save as)

Really good reading though!!

[CharlieBrady]

Thanks, but someone out there has to have some idea on which programs handle emails and in which order?!?!

Your system (apparently) includes RAV, which is non-standard. Maybe that's why no-one can help you.

In standard 6.x, mail is first handled by smtpfront-qmail, which hands it off to qmail-queue. qmail-local will get a hold of it and read the user's .qmail file and do what's directed therein - by default it will deliver to ./Maildir/.

Neither qmail nor smtpfront-qmail make changes to the content of email except to add Received: headers - they certainly don't strip attachments.

[Cyrus]

Great info there Charlie, thanks.

I am sorry but I guess I should've mentioned that I am definatly not using v6.x with RAV anymore, and am not experiancing any problems, so sorry for the miss understanding.

I just found that document that somewhat answered my original question,

"What i would like to know is is there somewhere a map of the process of recieveing mail, proccessing mail, and then sending mail from the server?"

and thought it might be of use to someone, that's all.