Slow SMTP Response And SMTP Timeouts (Doc ID 2439897.1)

Last updated on JUNE 22, 2023

Applies to:

Symptoms

We have 8 servers that are all configured the same.  All 8 servers started to generate the following SMTP errors during the same time period:

From the default log:

After Messaging Server was restarted across all 8 servers, the SMTP messages stopped.  But, it was then noticed that the messages occurred every night during a 6 hour window.

There were no crontab jobs running during this time that could have slowed down the server.  Also, there were no backups being performed during that time either.

Networking-wise, packets were captured between the frontend and backend messaging server and it was found that during the SMTP timeout episodes the Messaging Server was responding to the frontend "Mail From" or "RCPT To" messages with a 5 minute delay.  With this type of delay, the frontend already closed the connection.

Changes

Cause

My Oracle Support provides customers with access to over a million knowledge articles and a vibrant support community of peers and Oracle experts.