Re: MSF Chokes under load

Larry,

(Eval WarningMode = *on - I have an interest in a company that sells
email software)

I've found that the AS/400 SNADS + QMSF email environment is highly
unreliable for sending email. It is subject to just the kind of failure
you experienced and several things can cause the problem. It might be a
bad recipient address, mail server unavailable, bad host name, etc.).
The only way to restart it is with the *CLEAR option that you are
already using. That is because it queues up mail internally and keeps
retrying (and falling over) until you clear out a bad message. 

There are some things you can try. V4R4 has had a *lot* of PTF activity
on the TCP/IP stack and you should get current on the cum package and
the database group PTF. Then be sure to apply all hiper PTFs since the
last cum. And get all PTFs for MSF and SMTP. Then you should probably
turn off MSF for local delivery. Use CHGDSTA to do this. If you are
lucky and never, never pass a bad address to the server, you might get a
modicum of reliability from it. But I doubt it. 

If I sound a bit sceptical it's because I've been over this ground a
lot. Burned through SNDDST trying to make it work. Then through
QtmmSendMail. Hours on the phone with IBM. PTFs galore. I thought that
V4R4 would provide a more reliable SMTP service, but it didn't. The SMTP
software is the second worse AS/400 application I've seen from IBM
(AS/400 firewall takes first prize). My belief now is that if you have a
need for occasional email support you might get this to work acceptably.
If you need reliable, production quality email support, abandon hope of
getting it from IBM.

So what can you do? I recommend that you either write your own SMTP
client or you can get a commercial product. Writing your own SMTP client
to send to a single mail server without attachments might not be too
hard. There are some ILE RPG examples around that do sockets, and you
can do the dialog with your mail server pretty easily. It's not too
complicated. 

Now for the plug: You can get a cheap SMTP mailer called NetSend from
Net400 that has its own SMTP client, supports all kinds of attachments,
and is very fast. If you are interested in this you can get more
information here: http://www.net400.com.

(Eval WarningMode = *off)

Good luck!
Patrick

Larry Bolhuis wrote:
> 
> Have a customer on V4R4 that is sending approx 150 e-mail messages from an
> application using  SNDDST *MSG.  Some time before the messages are all 
>processed,
> MSF chokes and all MSF jobs end.  THe message issued is CPFAF95 - MSF job 
>ended
> reason 5
>  05 - Exit point program QZMFSNPA in library QSYS for exit point
>    QIBM_QZMFMSF_ADR_RSL indicated the MSF job is to be ended.
>      Processing for MSF message ID 103WABM9911051709110000000198 was ended and
>    will be processed again the next time MSF jobs are started using the Start
>    Mail Server Framework (STRMSF) command.
>  Recovery  . . . :   Based on the reason code, do one of the following:
>  04,05 - Use the DSPJOBLOG command to determine the cause of the exit point
>    program failing. There may be messages listed in the job log to determine
>    what caused the exit point program to fail. Correct any errors and then use
>    the End Mail Server Framework (ENDMSF) command to end all MSF jobs. Then 
>use
>    the Start Mail Server Framework (STRMSF) command to start the MSF jobs
>    again.
> 
> Restarting the jobs does nothing (except crash again) until we do STRMSF 
>*CLEAR.
> Having 99 MSF jobs running allows the process to sometimes complete without
> failure.  This is in a test environment.  It is expected that in production 
>about
> 10,000 messages will be sent in under 20 minutes each night.   We have loaded 
>the
> PTF that talks about MSF crashing under heavy load but this has had no affect.
> We are opening a problem with SupportLine but are hoping someone out there has
> seen this.
> 
> Thanks - Larry
> 
> --
> Larry Bolhuis         | What do You want to Reload today?
> Arbor Solutions, Inc  | Don't throw your PC out the window,
> (616) 451-2500        |  throw WINDOWS out of your PC.
> (616) 451-2571 -fax   | Two rules to success in life:
> lbolhui@ibm.net       | 1. Never tell people everything you know.
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-- 
IBM AS/400 communications, FTP automation, and network security
software and consulting services.

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