SMTP - 451 Requested action aborted: error in processing

[Mark Fenwick]

A SMTP 451 error has just started to occur on my Windows 2003 MailEnable Pro Server v1.16 that was running perfectly for over a year. The diagnostic tool still reports everything as green.

The debug logs (and attempting to send a message using telnet) show the error occurs just after the data command is sent (i.e. ‘mail from’ and ‘rcpt to’ were both okay) for every mail domain hosted by the server.

Checking back through the MailEnable and Windows event logs indicates the problem started to happen over the weekend, following a restart initiated by the windows automatic update service.

The following hotfix updates were installed:

- Cumulative Security Update for IE for Windows 2003 (KB890923)
- Security Update for Windows Server 2003 (KB893066)
- Security Update for Windows Server 2003 (KB893086)
- Security Update for Windows Server 2003 (KB890859)
- Microsoft Windows Installer 3.1 (KB893803 I think?)
- Update for BITS 2.0 and WinHTTP 5.1 (KB842773)

Can anyone advise what the problem might be?

Thanks

[MailEnable-Ian]

Hi,

Seems like the version you are running is quite outdated, I suggest you download the latest Professional version 1.54 and upgrade. You can find the latest version at this location: http://www.mailenable.com/mailenableprof.exe

regards,

[Mark Fenwick]

Ok I didnt want to just update to 1.54 because it has worked well for so long and upgrading to fix a problem can make thinsg worse.

Well I upgraded to 1.54 and immediatly lost all my post offices (about 20), so I restored from the pre-upgrade backup set which restored the post offices as well as restoring the version to 1.16.

However, now neither SMTP or POP3 seem to recognise the mailboxes contained in a postoffice (new or existing). SMTP gives a 503 authentication error for user specified in rcpt to. POP3 claims that all users are invalid.

What's th best way out of this mess?

[MailEnable-Ian]

Hi Mark,

When you do a restore from a backup directory it does not restore your version back to an older version (IE :v1.16). It sounds like your config directory has not been retained when you did the upgrade to 1.54. When you upgraded to the latest version did you select the setting to "Preserve existing settings"?

Have you checked the Address_map.tab file and the Auth.tab file located in this location: c:\program files\mailenable\Config and check if the mailbox details exist. The Auth.tab contains the mailbox credentials and the Address_map.tab files contains the email address for the mailbox. You can also check to see if the mailbox details are being added to these files by creating a new mailbox and cheching the files mentioned.

I suggest you follow the KB article below which explains how to recover configuration data if it acciedently deleted or if a system corruption occurs:
http://www.mailenable.com/kb/Content/Ar ... D=me020156

regards,

[Guest]

Thanks for that, I sort of got that figured. I think it coms down to manually configuring 1.16 to operate over 2 disks and 1.54 doing it automatically. My old system had the config data on c: and the post offices on d:, now both are on d:

Prior to your reply I re-installed 1.54 and created a single post office to test the original problem, which seems to be okay (I can create a message for a local mailbox via telnet onto port 25)

However, SMTP no longer seems happy to relay with the correct authentication provided. Outlook express will collect from pop3 but will error 550 to a non local address using the identical credentials.

What do I need to do to get this going?

[Guest]

Actually I think resolved both problems after reading the article you quoted.

I just replaced the config folder created by the 1.54 setup with the 1.16 version from the c: drive (after backing up of course) and, a few quick checks seem to suggest, it now works!

Is what I have done okay, does the 1.54 config folder contain anything that the 1.16 folder will be missing?

Thanks

[MailEnable-Ian]

Hi,

If you selected "preserve exisiting settings" when you upgraded then it will retain the old config file form the 1.16 version. Is all working OK now?

regards,