An email was unjunked but it was never delivered.

12/20/2019 1041 8243

DESCRIPTION:
An email was unjunked but it was never delivered.

RESOLUTION:

Scenario & Diagram:

This technote references the issue of mail being released from the junkbox not getting delivered to the recipient.

i.e. The end user gets a junkmail summary and see a message that he wants delivered. The user click on the unjunk button and it gives a successful or a failure, and doesn't deliver the mail to the users mailbox.

Procedure Steps:

1: Go to System/monitoring and check the backup SMTP server and make sure it is the downstream email server, (i.e. the exchange or lotus notes server), not the Email Security server. If the backup SMTP server is set to the Email Security server it can cause issues. If you have it set this way, when you unjunk the message it has a possibility of getting put back in to the junkbox once again.

2: Go to the web interface and go to System/Advanced/Download System/log files.

3: Download the commonlogs:webUI log for the day that the mail was unjunked. (They logs for the web UI are named by the day, i.e. 3.log for the 3rd.)

4: Open the log file in a text editor, Wordpad will work if you do not have any other editors. Now do a search for the email address, from the bottom of the file up, for the email address of the user that tried to unjunk the mail that failed to deliver.

5: Look for the section of the log that says unjunk, and has the users email address close to it in the logs. If you follow the unjunk process through the logs, it will state that it has has been successful or failed. If it failed, it will give a numeric error from the SMTP service of the downstream server, if the email security is able to contact the downstream server. The most common error is 550 and it is usually a relaying issue. If you see the relaying error, what this means is that the server that is listed in the backup SMTP server section, (usually the downstream) is not allowing the email security to send mail through it. You will need to correct this through the down stream server, by allowing the IP of the Email Security to relay off of the downstream server.

Ceveats:

There are other possibilites why the mail may not deliver, this is simply one of the most common, if you look in the logs and do not see the message failing due to 550 relaying or a rejection from the down stream, please call technical support.

How to Test this Scenario:

Got to the junkmail summary or the junkbox and unjunk the mail that previously didn't deliver.