Help! MailScanner isn't working/Mail isn't being delivered. What do I do?

If you run into serious problems, go through the following checks to find the problem and get MailScanner going again. It's important to check each one, as any of them can give clues to what is causing problems for MailScanner.

1. Check the maillog for errors and clues to what is not working. To tail the maillog, in SSH do:

tail -f /var/log/maillog

If your maillog isn't logging, do the following:

service syslog restart

Check to see if MailScanner is processing through a backlog before removing MailScanner or you will lose email. The easiest way to do this is via the ConfigServer Mail Queues plugin in WHM.

2. In /var/log/maillog, if it seems that MailScanner is just continually restarting over and over again and not actually processing any mail, or if you *only* see defunct MailScanner processes or no MailScanner processes at all when you do "ps axf", try the following at the shell prompt:

service MailScanner stop
killall -9 MailScanner
service MailScanner start

Then check the maillog again to see if MailScanner has started up correctly and is processing mail.

4. Check that the /tmp partition has plenty of space; otherwise, if full, it can break MailScanner. If you are seeing MailScanner having problems extracting or checking attachments, it could be that your /tmp/ directory doesn't have enough free space.

5. The following sequence will fix many MailScanner issues and can be run in SSH at any time without harm:

/scripts/buildeximconf
service exim restart
/usr/mscpanel/mscheck.pl

Make sure the file /etc/exim_outgoing.conf exists. If it does not, recreate it with

touch /etc/exim_outgoing.conf

and then repeat the above commands.

6. Try running MailScanner in debug mode to see if you get any informative errors.

service MailScanner stop
killall -9 MailScanner
/usr/mailscanner/usr/sbin/MailScanner --debug

MailScanner will run up and scan one batch of messages and then quit. After it's done you will need to start MailScanner either via the WHM front-end or with:

service MailScanner start

It's normal to see messages like the following when debugging:

If you see anything else, either try to fix whatever it is complaining about or log a ticket and ask us for assistance. Be sure to let us know what the output was when you ran debug.

7. Last shot before disabling it, try force upgrading MailScanner by clicking the Force MailScanner Update button in the ConfigServer MailScanner Front-End.

8. Still not working? Disable MailScanner by clicking the "MailScanner Disable" button in the WHM MailScanner front-end and then log a support ticket on the helpdesk.

Please be sure to let us know what steps you have done and what you have found, or any other changes you've made to the exim configuration, as it will help us troubleshoot the problem.