On a cPanel dedicated server, exim was unable to deliver emails and all the emails were stuck in mail queue. Here what we found in the exim_mainlog

2009-03-22 03:46:04 H=localhost (Server-IP) [127.0.0.1] Warning:
Sender rate 0.0 / 1h
2009-03-22 03:46:04 1LlJJk-0003cX-HY <= test@somedomain.com H=localhost (Server-IP) [127.0.0.1] P=esmtpa A=fixed_login:test@somedomain.com S=798 id=1853.17.23.12.34.1237711564.squirrel@Server-IP
2009-03-22 03:46:07 1LlJJk-0003cX-HY alt3.gmail-smtp-in.l.google.com [209.85.218.31] Connection refused
2009-03-22 03:46:10 1LlJJk-0003cX-HY alt4.gmail-smtp-in.l.google.com [209.85.221.10] Connection refused
2009-03-22 03:46:10 1LlJJk-0003cX-HY == ourtestmail@gmail.com R=lookuphost T=remote_smtp defer (111): Connection refused

While troubleshooting the issue, we found the following:

root@server [~]# iptables -nL

Chain OUTPUT (policy ACCEPT)
target     prot opt source               destination
ACCEPT     tcp  --  0.0.0.0/0            127.0.0.1           tcp dpt:25
REJECT     tcp  --  0.0.0.0/0            0.0.0.0/0           tcp dpt:25
reject-with icmp-port-unreachable

You have to remove this two iptables rules.

root@server [~]# iptables -D OUTPUT 2
root@server [~]# iptables -D OUTPUT 1

You then have to save iptables and restart.

root@server [~]# /etc/init.d/iptables save
root@server [~]# /etc/init.d/iptables restart

Now, check your mails and you will see all the mails getting delivered.

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On a cPanel server we were facing problems while sending mails it was giving the below errors:

2009-01-29 15:58:22 1LSYLW-0005Is-8d <= root@hostname.com U=root P=local S=377
2009-01-29 15:58:22 1LSYLW-0005Is-8d ** user@domain.com: Unrouteable address

The solution for this issue is find if the domains entry is present within /etc/localdomains , /etc/userdomains and /etc/trueuserdomains . If the domains entry is missing in any of the file – do add the domain within the files.

Also, make sure that the domains entry is in the /etc/valiases/domain.com , if this file is blank do add the line:

*: username

Then, you can test the mail from your server using the command line:

root# mail -s "Test Mail" user@domain.com

Here are the exim logs, which says the delivery is completed.

2009-01-29 16:06:39 1LSYTX-0007Jo-6D => user <user@domain.com> R=virtual_user T=virtual_userdelivery
2009-01-29 16:06:39 1LSYTX-0007Jo-6D Completed

That’s it.

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You may wonder how to check exim configuration in one command on a cPanel server, so here is the command to check exim configurations:

root@server# exim -bP

Now, you need to check the summary of messages in the mail queue it contains (Count, Volume, Oldest, Newest, and Domain) here is the command:

root@server# exim -bp | exiqsumm

If you want to print message ID of all the messages in the mail queue, here is the command:

root@server# exiqgrep –i

That’s it!

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Here are some exim commands which may help system administrators.

To check how many emails are in the exim mail queue the command is:

exim –bpc

Check frozen emails in the mail queue by the command:

exim –bp | grep frozen

Number of frozen emails in the mail queue:

exim –bp | grep frozen | wc –l

Delete frozen emails from the exim mail queue:

exim -bp | awk ‘$6 == “frozen” {print $3}’ | xargs exim –Mrm

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