CF Can't Connect To Mail Server

ColdFusion 6 and 7 had this nasty habit of having the mail handler sub-process dying from time-to-time. But that was rumored to be fixed in 8.

Can you telnet to port 25 on mail.yourdomain.com from the ColdFusion server when CF isn't able to send mail?

Try it. And if you get connected, issue a command like "helo cnn.com". That should illicit a response from the SMTP server. That'll tell you REAL quick if it is CF dying or a plug in the pipe on port 25.

FWIW, pinging the mail server won't tell you if something else is blocking the connection to the mail server.

I ran into the same thing on several servers this morning. They are running CF Ent 7.x fully patched. The config included both standalone and JRun4 clusters on Windows 2003 Server w/SP2.

It would error out trying to close the pop3 connection from our mailserver. This resulted in no mail being delivered. You can ensure that your pop3 settings are good by adding debug=yes to your cfpop config and then examining the server-out.log file

Java 6 Update 3 was the culprit in our case. It was accidentally installed and resulted in no other apparent issues. Do an uninstall and restart your instance(s) and you should be good to go. We were.

Enojy.

Joshua Cook
IT Administrator
Zoom Airlines.

Try pinging your mail server from the system you have CF on. That's a start to see if it's CF or a firewall/network/IP problem.

Are you running McAfee? It has an option to block outbound port 25 traffic. And it likes to turn itself on from time-to-time without being asked.

> it fails, using
> all of the same settings that worked 2 hours ago.

Something has changed in your config.

It might not have been you who changed it, so ask around.

THis sort of thing doesn't just "stop working", without intervention of
some description.

Have you checked your SMTP server is responsive?

Have you given the system a reboot (it is Windows after all, so this is
almost the first troubleshooting step).

Is you mail server set to relay email for the CF server? (NB: do NOT set
an OPEN relay. That would be bad).

Have your relay settings, or login creds changed?

Has anyone been fiddling with your firewall or port filters or anything?

Have you asked your mail admin what they've been doing?

There's really a lot of things you could investigate and report back on, I
think.

--
Adam