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retry time not reached for any host 'gmail.com' on outbound SMTP (any external mail server.. not just gmail.com)

Paul Wilson
  • Edited

Hi,

I'm reaching out to seek guidance on resolving a persistent issue we're encountering with our outbound email.

Occasionally, emails aren't initially delivered due to problems with what looks to be issues with  our outbound mail server. They do eventually get delivered

I reported this to the provider of our managed cPanel instance, and they attribute it to excessive failed delivery attempts to invalid email addresses which sometimes triggers the configured limit of 25 failed emails, resulting in a one-hour outbound lockout.

I was intially concerned that this might indicate a compromised email account or workstation, or potentially an internal spam issue. However, upon reviewing the cPanel "Track Delivery" logs, all the warnings seem to involve valid email addresses tied to legitimate emails.

Here's a summary of the situation:

  • For years, we've been sending biweekly payroll emails to 30+ employees without issue. Occasionally, when this email is being sent and the mail server experiences problems, we get locked out.

  • It seems intermittent SMTP server issues cause delivery failures, and once enough emails fail within that time frame, we exceed the 25-failure threshold.

  • The failures often appear in small groups throughout the day in the "Track Delivery" log; but arent enough to trigger the 25 failure limit (Not a issue as long as they eventually get delivered; but the issue is when we get locked out for a hour.)

  • The issue cannot be consistently replicated and happens intermittently, including when sending emails within our own domain using our mail servers.

  • We suspect the SMTP servers might be part of a shared pool, where issues only arise when certain servers are actively in use.

  • We don't receive bounce-back messages for these failed deliveries, but users report lockouts when the limit is hit and they can't send email fro a hour..

  • The "Retry time not reached for any host...." message can repeat a few times; but usually ends in a successful send entry in the log

Do you have any insights into what might be causing these issues or suggestions on how to resolve them?

Thank you for your time and assistance.

Best regards,


Paul

Comments

5 comments

Date Votes
  • Andrew
    Translate

    Have you asked your provider yet? They might block the port.

    Andrew N. - cPanel Plesk VMWare Certified Professional
    Do you need immediate assistance? 20 minutes response time!* Open a ticket
    EmergencySupport - Professional Server Management and One-time Services

    0
  • cPRex Jurassic Moderator

    Hey there!  Whenever I see the "retry time not reached" on a system that is otherwise working well, I wonder if the issue is with the DNS resolvers on the system, as that would cause the email server to not be able to reach the destination machine.

    As a temporary test, I'd recommend adjusting /etc/resolv.conf to use the Google public resolvers:

    nameserver 8.8.8.8
    nameserver 8.8.4.4

    and see if that remedies the issue.  If so, you can let your provider know that things are working well so they can fix the resolver issue on their end.

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  • Paul Wilson

    Hi

    I don't think I have access to any low level root access to the box, as were running off a shared cpanel instance.

    I followed up with my cpanel provider/hoster, asking to be bumped up to 3rd level support.  They re-iterated there is no issue as they're able to send 1 email, and that its us spamming, given us instructoins on how not to spam,  and has closed the ticket ( yet again...)

    I work in the IT field and the responses I'm getting are driving me bonkers!!  I'm reporting that I've see a Tree falling in a forest, and they reply back and say that its not happening because they don't see the tree actually falling when they looked out their window..  ignoring the fallen trees lying around.

    The issue doesn't happen all the time.. Just once and a while and doesn't usually effect us directly as long as we don't hit more than 25 of these issues within a certain window.

    I have a PDF generated which I've put togther to what I'm seeing; but couldn't figure out how to attach it (I've been up 17 hours and am just mentally wacked), so have included pictures instead.  I've tweaked the email addresses, and change our domain name to @OurDomain.xx as don't want to post the email address due to privacy

    Yellow lines are the issue occuring with the email eventually being delivered, and the failure increasing count is in column1.

    At 25 failures, our outbound email starts to be blocked for a hour (some squeeze through but within a few minutes no outbound email)

    Am I missing something?  Am I wrong?  Is this us spamming? Don't think so

    Thoughts on how to get our cpanel provider to look into this?

    Thanks

    Paul

     

    0
  • cPRex Jurassic Moderator

    I'm sorry to hear you aren't getting great support from your provider.  If you happen to catch this happening in real-time AND you have cPanel Terminal access you could try running this to get the mailserver information:

    dig mx domain.com

    where "domain.com" is the address that is failing to be delivered to.  Once you have that, you can run this:

    telnet mailserver.domain.com 25

    For example, if we want to look up Gmail:

    # dig +short mx gmail.com
    5 gmail-smtp-in.l.google.com.

    then we'd try connecting to that mailserver:

    telnet gmail-smtp-in.l.google.com 25

    If the connection is working, you should get a response similar to this:

    # telnet gmail-smtp-in.l.google.com 25
    Trying 2607:f8b0:4004:c09::1b...
    Connected to gmail-smtp-in.l.google.com.
    Escape character is '^]'.
    220 mx.google.com ESMTP 6a1803df08f44-6f0de95fc4asi42851506d6.6 - gsmtp

    and the mailserver you test will show something similar.  However, if the connection isn't working, you'll see a failure or timeout.

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  • Paul Wilson
    • Edited

    Hi cPRex

    I havent attempted to connect up via a ssh terminal session as the web interface has been enough for what I need; but will look to connect up and run the shell commands provided  if I catch the issue happening.

    The issue seems to be in effect for around 1-2 minutes based on the cpanel logs, but its only noticed if there is enough email volume to trigger the outbound smtp block.  The issue window could actually be larger but without outbound email activity, there would be no logs

    From the logs,

    • 3 issue on the 10th
    • 5 on the 9th
    • 8 on the 8th
    • 4 on the 7th

    I don't expect our hosting provider to be able to do anything; so as long as we don't hit 25 email failures within the issue window, then the issue is moot.

    One final thing to note, is the issue has happened with sending emails between users in the domain.

    Thanks for the feed back

     

     

     

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