Tracing an incoming or outgoing mail

As the email server administrator, many a times your users will ask about a particular mail. Common questions include: “What happened to this mail that I was supposed to received?”, “Did the email I sent out got delivered successfully?” and “Why was this spam mail not filtered?”

You can trace a mail using the WebAdmin and easily get the delivery log for it. This log file more often than not will give the answers to these questions.

Below we have provided some common messages that you see in these log files which will help you to understand them.

Login to the WebAdmin, navigate to Server Status/Search Logs. Specify “Sender Address”, “ Recipient Address” and the date of transaction. Click details for complete transaction information.

Various possible reasons that can cause emails to be blocked:

1. Black-listed, example log as below:

2011-07-25 10:09:40 2 Info New transaction started. .\smtpqueue\mn5cloud.com.my\LIN0f374262-a04c-4f19-bca3-1eba4f6904d4.qjb,S:ramesh@mn5cloud.com.my,R:(liz@mn5cloud.com.my)

2011-07-25 10:09:40 2 Info Transaction ended: SC:0,F:1,B:0,OC:Completed

Details :

2011-07-25 10:09:40 Info Start delivery for .\smtpqueue\mn5cloud.com.my\LIN0f374262-a04c-4f19-bca3-1eba4f6904d4.qjb

2011-07-25 10:09:40 Info Sender (ramesh@mn5cloud.com.my) blocked by admin-defined blacklist

2011-07-25 10:09:40 Info Job completed and deleted

2. Deleted by message rules, example log as below:

2011-07-25 11:06:34 6 Info New transaction started. .\smtpqueue\mn5cloud.com.my\LIN9c80edc4-4980-4d8b-8021-25d0b4c82d6b.qjb,S:ramesh@mn5cloud.com.my,R:(christina@mn5cloud.com.my)

2011-07-25 11:06:34 6 Info Transaction ended: SC:0,F:0,B:0,OC:Completed

Details :

2011-07-25 11:06:34 Info Start delivery for .\smtpqueue\mn5cloud.com.my\LIN9c80edc4-4980-4d8b-8021-25d0b4c82d6b.qjb

2011-07-25 11:06:34 Info Message rule: Mail deleted

2011-07-25 11:06:34 Info Mail deleted by message rules. Job completed and deleted

3. Filtered by Anti-Spam, example log as below

2011-07-25 10:58:41 5 Info New transaction started. .\smtpqueue\mn5cloud.com.my\LIN0d44203a-8377-4cbe-aa26-487c275df90e.qjb,S:ramesh@mn5cloud.com.my,R:(liz@mn5cloud.com.my)

2011-07-25 10:58:41 5 Info Transaction ended: SC:0,F:1,B:0,OC:Completed

Details :

2011-07-25 10:58:41 Info Start delivery for .\smtpqueue\mn5cloud.com.my\LIN0d44203a-8377-4cbe-aa26-487c275df90e.qjb

2011-07-25 10:58:41 Info Detected as spam (spam=1, scr=300, ver=01.323.33 ,^Y296-03 (300))

2011-07-25 10:58:41 Info Junked:liz@mn5cloud.com.my

2011-07-25 10:58:41 Info Job completed and deleted

Possible reason why the email allowed through

1. White-listed, example log as below:

2011-07-25 10:56:01 4 Info New transaction started. .\smtpqueue\mn5cloud.com.my\LIN50d8c68e-9c59-4848-998e-71bdb866efc5.qjb,S:ramesh@mn5cloud.com.my,R:(liz@mn5cloud.com.my)

2011-07-25 10:56:07 4 Info Transaction ended: SC:1,F:0,B:0,OC:Completed

Details :

2011-07-25 10:56:01 Info Start delivery for .\smtpqueue\mn5cloud.com.my\LIN50d8c68e-9c59-4848-998e-71bdb866efc5.qjb

2011-07-25 10:56:01 Info Sender (ramesh@mn5cloud.com.my) allowed in by admin-defined whitelist

2011-07-25 10:56:07 Info Delivered:liz@mn5cloud.com.my

2011-07-25 10:56:07 Info Job completed and deleted