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How do I correct a mail loop?

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12 replies

by joshua1

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From time to time, a message will be delivered to a user's inbox repeatedly (10+ times). The time stamp on the e-mail is the same on every message. There doesn't appear to be any pattern in the sending domain, or the user who this happens to. I haven't moved the mailboxes around. How can I correct this?

I'm running Exchange 2000 and Outlook 2000.
Thanks.

12 replies

by sixfourtykilo

You may be able to enable the Junk Email filter supplied with Outlook. If this user doesn't need email from the account its being sent from, block the sender. You can find this filter from Organize in the Tools Menu.

Hope this helps!
640k

by joshua1

Some of the incoming Internet mail would be from vendors, customers, etc, so I can't filter out the senders. I'm looking to battle the problem instead the symptom. Any ideas why Ex2k would do this?

by draegor

Occasionally, this happens when a message is sent to a group and one or more people in the group has a vacation rule. That rule sends back to the group ( of which the person is a member) the "I'm on vacation" message. --- Which initates the whole vicious circle again. Internally it can be traced, but if it's external, you need to send a individual message to everyone in the group to trace it down and shut the rule off.

I've had thousands of messages sent before I got it traced down to the individual. Then I had to break into their mailbox to shut down the rule.

by draegor

Some mail systems can recognize this loop and shut it down after a set number of loops. Other e-mail packages are not as sophisticated or cannot recognize a loop that extends outside it's internal domain.

by joshua1

The looping mail is strictly incoming messages from the Internet. The mail is sent only to 1 internal user. They're not auto-replies, just a standard message. After a user sees it 10 or 20 times, they call the helpdesk.

by joshua1

The mail that loops is always an incoming Internet message sent to 1 user in my domain. It's a normal message, not an auto-response or out-of-office message.

by maxwell edison

Look at the emails that are causing the loop, and you might see that mail from those addresses have a rule concerning forwording. It sounds as though these might be getting caught in a forwarding loop.

Maxwell

by joshua1

Upgrade your PIX to a newer version. Communication was being damaged at the firewall (due to Fixup protocol). I wanted to keep fixup enabled, though. This bug was fixed in newer versions. The sending server was not understanding the response it got, and my gateway server was not understanding the commands it was receiving. This caused the sending server to re-send the message.

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