Topic: Multiple copies of emails received. (Updated)

[bangalla]

I have a problem that has started occurring since I upgraded to 7.3. I am receiving multiple copies of emails from some sources, mainly mailing lists. The strange thing is that I'll receive these messages over a number of days, while in the mean time the rest of my email is working fine. Any suggestions about where to start looking, and what to look for?

[bangalla]

OK, After some more research my duplicate emails problem seems to be similar to some others people have had with qmail where the timeout has been too short to allow a message to be flagged as received properly(even though it is), thereby causing the mail to be re-sent.

My question now becomes, how can I check what the timeout value for inbound SMTP is on my SME server and what do I need to do to change this value to see if it will solve my problem?

Cheers

Dave

[CharlieBrady]

OK, After some more research my duplicate emails problem seems to be similar to some others people have had with qmail where the timeout has been too short to allow a message to be flagged as received properly(even though it is), thereby causing the mail to be re-sent.

My question now becomes, how can I check what the timeout value for inbound SMTP is on my SME server and what do I need to do to change this value to see if it will solve my problem?

Firstly I must point out that qmail has nothing to do with inbound SMTP. Inbound SMTP is handled by qpsmtpd.

Secondly, you have to diagnose exactly why qpsmtpd is not completing the delivery before the connecting SMTP server gives up waiting.

What are you seeing which makes you think that a timeout is too short?

[bangalla]

What are you seeing which makes you think that a timeout is too short?

To be honest all I have to go on is the behaviour I'm seeing and a search for similar problems elsewhere. In some of those cases the problem has been fixed by changing the timeout, and as my first post didn't prompt any suggestions I decided that trying that change might be a good start.

The behaviour I am seeing is that I am receiving duplicate copies of emails over a number of days. The worst offender is a rather lengthy daily newsletter that I subscribe to, and I receive copies of it for about three days. A single copy of each of the last three days emails will arrive simultaneously a few times a day, as if they had all been retried following a delivery failure. Some other random emails have given the same behaviour, but none of them have had the same number of duplicates.

As I said in my first post I'm open to any suggestions of where to look and what to look for.

[CharlieBrady]

As I said in my first post I'm open to any suggestions of where to look and what to look for.

Every time you post here there's a suggestion

Don't report problems here - Please report bugs and potential bugs in the bug tracker

[larieu]

It seems that I'm stuck in the same problem

I made a new step for work around
I was subscribed to several mailing lists and this duplicate mail problem happend from time to time to my inbox (other colleagues reported this more often - especially in IMAP accounts with more than 5 users which monitoring that account)

I subscribed to the same mailing list with other public accounts (i.e. @yahoo.com, @gmail.com ...)
the behaviour is as follows

In gmail account I never received a duplicate from any list
but in yahoo from 5 times duplicate accounts received in sme server at least 3 was doubled, too

the problem become bigger because some accounts receive the same mail for 6 to over 10 times
all mails are received in the same moment or a small difference in s apply between them

any work around will be welcomed

[psdata]

Hello Guys,

See these forum message and read also the bug report on it thers is is the solution
It has help me when I did a update to 7.3 (7.4 now)

http://forums.contribs.org/index.php/topic,33665.0.html

I have done the options 7 in the folowing forum message http://bugs.contribs.org/show_bug.cgi?id=401

Goodluck

John

[rkosiorek]

i also have this problem. and it occurs for all users on the system. it started after i upgraded from SME6 to SME7.

yes it was a clean install. i installed on a new box after the original drive failed. and i did try the "Bug 401" fix. neither one fixed the problem.

i also believe that it is something to do with a timeout.

problem occurs more when there is a larger volume of mail to be delivered. obviously that takes a longer time. i suspect that my ISP is throttling the traffic on the ports used for the transfer and that this is causing the problem. is there any way to check or confirm that this is the issue? I also think that extending the time out period would solve this. so how can i set or check the time out please?

by the way the ISP in question is COGECO.CA in the south eastern Ontario Canada area. is anyone else out there with this problem using the same ISP? if so it may point to the ISP practices contributing to this problem.

[psdata]

Hello

If you thinck it's a mail connection problem set the mail sync time to a hour are more.

And see if you get doubles mails.

Yes, it is a point if you collect your e-mail with POP, and you you have very large e-mails, and your pop time is 5 minute's you get also double mail. Becouse your server start all ready a new session to your ISP to collect new mail and the new mail is not set yet becouse in your first session it's collecting all ready new mail. I have had some time a e-mail about 10 Mb bif send to more then one user on the mail domain. they the mail again again again. But that's not double. (solution: make time longer 1 hour 2 hour's are go to the web-mail site off your ISP login with your user account of your ISP and remove that mail.

Succes

[larieu]

I noticed that this happen only when spamassassin use >50% CPU for long time
if I disable Spamassasin in the interval 13 00 ~ 17 00 no duplicate apear

[cactus]

I noticed that this happen only when spamassassin use >50% CPU for long time
if I disable Spamassasin in the interval 13 00 ~ 17 00 no duplicate apear

That is a known issue, caused by the fact that spamassasin is taking to long (indeed) and your mailserver does not respond to the other party in time, which then schedules for a resend (later) AFAIK.

I suggest you upgrade CPU and perhaps memory on your server as well.