Question : Have Qmail on a RedHat Fedora 5 Linux box that won't send mail from Outlook.

The qmail server was working yesterday.  I added a new email account via qmailadmin and then all of a sudden it stopped sending email via outlook.  You can access email via Squirrelmail, I can see the mailboxes are receiving email but Outlook will not connect to the smtp server properly.  It gives this type of error message.  Outlook2003 times out waiting for smtp server (0x80042110B) .  

I have tried stopping and starting the qmail services.  We use routes for smtp.comcast.net to push to certain domains.  I am just stumped.  I am not by any means an expert on qmail.  I actually have no knowledge of the product but think it is something simple if I had the instructions on how to check the smtp settings.  

Sorry for the long explanation, I am just at my wits end.  Please help if you can.  Thank you.  

Rebecca Owens

Answer : Have Qmail on a RedHat Fedora 5 Linux box that won't send mail from Outlook.

Since it sounds like you're still receiving mail I'm guessing the qmail-smtpd service is still working.  I've seen this error occur when there are no more smtp connections available to serve client requests due to spammers hammering the server.

You can see how many connections you have in use out of your total available by checking your qmail-smtpd log.  When you SMTPD connections are maxed out it will look like:

@40000000478f992e39be303c tcpserver: status: 179/180
@40000000478f992e39be3424 tcpserver: status: 180/180

As you can see, 180 out of 180 connections are in use which means an Outlook client trying to relay a message may not get a smtp connection.

The number of connections is set in your qmail-smtpd "run" script commonly found in your supervise directory.  If you find that you are in fact hitting the wall with the number of concurrent smtp connections, I would try increasing this value to a number that your server hardware can reasonably handle.