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Why am I seeing "condition check lookup defer" in /var/log/exim_mainlog and "file_create_locked" in /var/log/maillog?

cPanelAaronH
  • Updated

Symptoms

When checking your Exim logs you notice the following error:

CONFIG_TEXT: YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM:SS H=([ipaddress]) [ipadress]:port F=user@remotedomain.tld temporarily rejected RCPT user@localdomain.tld: condition check lookup defer

You also see numerous messages similar to the following when checking the maillog:

CONFIG_TEXT: Mon DD HH:MM:SS hostname dovecot: imap(user@localdomain.tld)<977518><QcQotdvup4y+a+Sf>: Error: Mailbox INBOX.Drafts: file_create_locked(/home/username/mail/domain.tld/emailuser/mailboxes/Drafts/dbox-Mails/dovecot-vsize.lock) failed: safe_mkstemp(/home/username/mail/domain.tld/emailuser/mailboxes/Drafts/dbox-Mails/dovecot-vsize.lock) failed: Disk quota exceeded

Cause

The described errors occur when multiple events coincide:

  • A cPanel user's account is over quota
  • A mail user on that cPanel account receives a message
  • Dovecot in the server is sufficiently busy

This causes Dovecot to effectively Denial of Service attack itself, and prevents the mail from being delivered in a timely manner, which in turn results in the Exim notice above.

We've opened an internal case for our development team to investigate this further. For reference, the case number is CPANEL-41988. Follow this article to receive an email notification when a solution is published in the product.

This is resolved, but leaving here in case someone needs the case ID.

Resolution

There are currently a few known workarounds to this behavior.

Restart Dovecot

Restarting Dovecot will provide temporary relief until Dovecot becomes overloaded again.

  1. Log in to WHM as root
  2. Navigate to Home / Restart Services / IMAP Server
  3. Click the Restart button
Increase the Mailbox quota query timeout.
  1. Log in to WHM as root
  2. Navigate to Home / Service Configuration / Exim Configuration Manager
  3. Search for Mailbox quota query timeout
  4. Increase the value to 90
Increase the cPanel user's disk quota
  1. Log in to WHM as root or the reseller that owns the account.
  2. Navigate to Home » Account Functions » Modify an Account.
  3. Select the account to modify.
  4. Select the Modify button.
  5. Under the Resource Limits heading, enter the new quota limit in the Disk Space Quota (MB) field.
  6. Select the Save button.

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Comments

1 comment

Date Votes
  • Jesse Asklund cPanel Staff

    Update: CPANEL-41988 is solved in the following cPanel & WHM version(s) and newer:

    114.0.6

    0

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