Hi, all. Sorry in advance for the long message.

I've got this pesky message on an Exchange 2000 server that
gets queued every time I restart SMTP. And when it gets
queued, I can see from the logs that an SMTP session is
started with the recipient server, but the session never
finishes. My server says DATA, the other answers "OK, End
with." but even after days, no "Message accepted for
delivery" and definitely no QUIT. I can see in netstat
there's a connection to the recipient server and it just
stays that way. This has the result of blocking all other
outgoing messages to that particular mail domain.

We are otherwise fine for sending and receiving. I can do
a "manual" SMTP session to the domain in question, so
connectivity seems fine. I can see from the logs that it's
getting to the right server, etc. If I add a connector for
this domain after SMTP has restarted (and the persistent
connection gets set up), I can successfully queue up and
send mail to the domain.

I can delete this message from the queue in ESM, but the
stuck connection (as seen in netstat) doesn't go away. I
stop SMTP and of course the stuck connection goes away, but
once SMTP is restarted, even though I'd cleared the queue,
the server tries once again to send this message, again
blocking the queue. I've also tried renaming the vsi 1
directory before restarting SMTP but I get the same thing.
I've methodically restarted Exchange services after
restarting SMTP and this message doesn't show up until I
start the Information Store.

So, where is this message coming from? I don't need to get
it sent; I'd just LOOOOVE to not have it show up in the
queue again, as all other messages to this mail domain seem
to be fine. Is there another queue I'm missing?

Thanks!
--Russ

P.S. For e-mail remove the "XXXX" in my address.

Archived from group: microsoft>public>exchange2000>transport