E-mail problem: 5550 5.3.0 Can’t create output

Some user reported this morning the inability to send messages to users. They received a common error,

Final-Recipient: RFC822; username@ups.edu
X-Actual-Recipient: RFC822; username@ups.edu
Action: failed
Status: 5.3.0
(reason: Can’t create output)

This error was the result of poor deactivation of the quotaing system. The quota system had been turned off, but not removed from the fstab file. When the system was rebooted yesterday, the quota system was re-enabled and locked account in excess of their time limit. This issue has been corrected.

Network upgrade

The planned OS upgrade of core network equipment on Sunday was not as smooth as planned. Two systems had difficulty with the upgrade and required a reboot: the mail server, and the Oracle development server. Otherwise, the upgrade was a success.

As a result of the problem, we have a better understanding of the upgrade process for future upgrades.

Added a redirect in /.htaccess

Added to /.htaccess in www.ups.edu

Redirect /sciencecenter http://sciencecenter.ups.edu/

This is in support of an awareness campaign in which the address www.ups.edu/sciencecenter is in use. This will allow the includes to work at all levels without a major reworking of the site.

Packeteer Fails

The Packeteer failed on 12/15/04. In fact, it’s been failing for the past few months with a hard drive problem, but today, it went down hard. Packeteer is shipping a new unit to arrive 12/17/04. Until then, the traffic on our internet is uncontrolled.

Dial-in Failures

The radius daemon and portmaster were reset to address several reported issues with dial-in access. The core reason for users not being authenticated is not completely clear, but there are indications that the portmaster or the radius daemon became confused about the appropriate share secret. Once all entryies were reset authentication started to be validated correctly.

During the process, four modems were identified as failing to respond properly and were removed from service.

Mail Problems Continue

Our antivirus gateway has continued to function suboptimally. Over the past two days, it has been unable to keep up with the mail load. This is apparently due to the large number of virus-infected messages, and a larger than normal number of arriving messages. As of the time of this entry, we have approximately 75000 messages in queue.

The antivirus gateway has been taken entirely out of the mail flow, so new mail will be delivered in a timely fashion today.
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Antivirus Gateway Problems III

All attempts to get the antivirus gateway to process messages faster have failed. Network Associates, the maker of the product, stated that the theoretical limit of throughput for the software was 5-10000 messages per hour, if no messages are infected, and if no other filtering was being done. They were unable to say exactly what was causing what we’re seeing.
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