Kavi Help CenterKavi Mailing List Manager Help
| Chapter 36. Email Seems Slow, What Is Going On? | ||
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Part II. Troubleshooting Guide | 
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Table of Contents
This document walks mailing list users and administrators through the process of troubleshooting email when delivery seems to have been delayed.
If you are a mailing list user rather than an administrator, you should know that this issue is frequently misreported. There are some simple preliminary troubleshooting steps you can perform to eliminate the most common causes of misreporting while you collect data that will be needed by Support. See Troubleshooting Instructions for List Users.
I sent an email a while ago but it hasn't been posted yet.
I just got an email that was sent a long time ago.
More than a day has gone by and a message I sent or expected to receive has not been delivered: Where Is this Message?.
A message was delivered, but one of the people who should have received it says it never arrived: Why Didn't Bob Get this Message?.
The first five items in this list correspond to the five steps in Troubleshooting Instructions for List Users. If you weren't provided with the required Information for Troubleshooting, consider sending a link to the troubleshooting instructions if you think it's appropriate.
The message wasn't posted to the list because the sender used an address doesn't have direct posting privileges, so the message was rejected or else sent to a moderation queue.
The message was never sent and is sitting in someone's outbox.
The message was posted to the list and the recipient reporting the issue has received the message but doesn't realize it.
The message was posted to the list but the recipient reporting the issue hasn't received the message. The user may be monitoring an address that isn't subscribed, or the subscribed address may be incorrect, or the subscribed address may be correct but the mailbox is full or is monitored by an overzealous spam filter.
Someone tried to verify whether the message was posted by looking for it in archives that haven't been updated yet. Lists archives are often updated periodically rather than instantaneously, so there is often some lag time between the moment a message is posted and the moment the archives are updated. The message won't appear in the archives until the next scheduled update.
The message was rejected by a mailing list or classified as spam because it wasn't properly constructed (e.g., it had an empty 'Subject:' field). Depending on the spam filter, the message may be returned to the sender with a rejection notice or it may simply be deleted without notifying the sender or administrators.
Email is working properly, but it IS slow because the mail server is processing a high volume of email. This message may have a large attachment or may have been sent to a large number of recipients, or both—or it may have been delayed by a high-volume message ahead of it in the mail queue.
Email is slow because the mail queue is clogged by a message that was sent to a stale address list containing a large number of invalid addresses. Invalid addresses take longer to process, so these messages can clog the mail queue and slow the mail delivery rate.
Sometimes mail is slow because something actually IS wrong with the sending or receiving mail server.
If you are the person who sent the message to the mailing list (Sender) or are a subscriber who received a message that was (Recipient), there are some steps you can take to troubleshoot and possibly resolve this issue, or at least collect data before contacting Support. Some of these steps may seem overly obvious, but the resolutions described here are all drawn from real life cases. Email issues can be quite subtle, so those who take the time to troubleshoot their own email issues will be rewarded with increased mastery of the somewhat arcane lore governing email and mailing lists.
If you would like more information about email or mailing lists, the Kavi Mailing List Manager has a lot of online help that may be of interest. For more information on mailing list rules and what happens when you send a message to a mailing list, see the Concepts document Posting Messages to a Mailing List. If you are new to mailing lists or email, you may want to read Composing Email to Post to a List, especially if your message was rejected as spam. If you need to contact Support, be prepared to forward a copy of the email including the full header, see Accessing the Full Header for Email Troubleshooting for instructions. You can also forward information about any of the troubleshooting steps you performed to speed up the process.
Mailing list users often think that email is slow because they sent a message to a mailing list and it hasn't been posted after a reasonable period of time. In the large majority of cases, email is not slow and there is another reason why the message is delayed—usually because the sender inadvertently ran afoul of posting restrictions. These instructions can help you check up on the status of a message sent to a mailing list. If you sent the message, read the Sender Instructions. If you are one of the intended recipients, read the Recipient Instructions.
If you're the sender, double check your sent mail folder and out-box. Sometimes people think email is slow when the message was never actually sent. Hey, it could happen to anyone.
While you're at it, review your email to be sure it is properly addressed and well-structured, with content in the email subject and body. If your email had an empty subject field or body, it is likely to be rejected, or even deleted, by a spam filter.
People sometimes check the mailing list archives to see whether their message has been sent to the list or not. This isn't always a reliable indicator, since instant-archiving may not be enabled for this list. If this is the case, the message won't appear in the archives until the next scheduled update cycle.
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With the exception of public mailing lists, lists restrict posting to protect the quality of the list and prevent it from being used to distribute spam. Most lists accept messages only from subscribed addresses. When a mailing list receives an email message, it finds the envelope sender address and checks to see whether the address has posting privileges. If you send a message from an unsubscribed address or there is a typo in your email address or your address has changed but your account information hasn't been updated, the mailing list won't find a matching address. In these cases the sender (you) is classified as a public user, so the list applies whatever posting rules apply to public users.
If this is a new address, you might want to login and use the My Account page to check your email address information and edit or update it if necessary.
If this list only accept posts from subscribers, you must send the message from a subscribed account. Changing the From or Reply-to addresses won't fool the mailing list software, since it ignores these fields.
Now that you are sure you sent the message from an address that can be recognized by the mailing list, you need to know what posting rules apply to this address. Mailing lists that accept messages from subscribers or public addresses may send the message to await moderator review rather than posting the message directly to the list. Some mailing lists only accept messages from moderators (i.e., addresses on the Moderators list). To find out what posting rules apply to this mailing list, visit the Mailing List Home page.
If this list moderates messages from subscribers, your message is sent to the moderation queue rather than posted directly to the list. It remains in the moderation queue until approved or rejected by the moderator. If the list is very large, the moderator may not be able to review every individual message, so your message may timeout and be automatically returned to you. It may be several days until your message times out of the moderation queue.
Messages sent to large mailing lists and messages with large attachments (or both) place a high burden on system resources and will naturally require extra time to clear the mail queue. There could also be a high volume message ahead of it in the queue. If this describes your message, allow some extra time before looking further into whether there might be a delivery problem or not.
If you've followed these instructions and as far as you can tell, your message should have been posted, check for it one last time before forwarding the full headers to support.
People often think that email is slow when they see a big gap between the time an email was sent and the time they received it. But the most common reasons for this gap have nothing to do with any problems with email delivery. These instructions can help you determine why an email message was delayed and whether there is an issue that should be reported to support.
Messages sent to large mailing lists and messages with large attachments (or both) place a high burden on system resources, so naturally this kind of message requires extra time to clear the mail queue. In this situation, it may take an hour or more for the message to be sent out to every subscriber or recipient (as many as four hours when a large attachment is sent to a large number of subscribers), even though email is working properly.
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If list rules require this message to be moderated, it would have been sent to the moderation queue rather than posted directly to the list. It sat in the moderation queue until approved by the moderator. To find out what posting rules apply to this mailing list, visit the Mailing List Home page.
Remember that the mailing list applies posting rules and determines posting privileges based on the sender's email address. If the sender used an email address that doesn't have direct posting privileges, list rules might require the message to be sent for moderation.
If you've followed these instructions and none of them apply to this situation, please forward the >full email header to Support.
If you are an administrator, learn to take a somewhat skeptical approach when you get a report that "email is slow" because this issue is commonly misreported. The assertion that email must be slow is usually just a guess as to why a message sent to a mailing list doesn't appear to have been posted immediately. There is also a general misconception that if email seems slow the mail server is probably down, but this seldom true. Its important to step back from the reporter's assertions about the probable cause of the problem and collect the hard data you need to properly troubleshoot the issue and keep an open mind about the probable cause.
When a message sent to a mailing list isn't posted immediately, it's usually because it was sent from an email address that doesn't have direct posting privileges so it was rejected or is languishing in a moderation queue. There are many reasons why the message might never have reached the mailing list mailbox or may have been successfully posted but for some reason it has been missed by the reporter.
Interestingly enough, in the relatively small percentage of cases when email actually IS slow, it's generally because the mail server is processing a high volume of email. The delayed message itself is the most likely culprit, or there may be a high-volume message ahead of it in the mail queue. It almost never means that the mail server is down.
Please collect the following information (or as much of it as possible):
A copy of the message (or at minimum: the date it was sent, the time, timezone and subject line).
Did this message have an attachment? If so, what is its file type and file size?
Did a particular individual report not receiving the message? If so, what is the email address where the message was expected?
Gather any other potentially pertinent information provided by the reporter (such as whether the message was posted to a mailing list or alias, why the reporter thinks the message should have been delivered but wasn't, etc.).
If the email really is slow, this is the most common cause. View the Web Response Times graph on the Site Usage Reports and Tools page. A spike or intermittent high load level on the graph indicates email is working properly but the mail server is processing a high volume load.
If you know the message had a large attachment or was sent to a large recipient list, then you can provide this information to the querant.
Results
- Yes
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Resolution: The server is processing a high volume of messages. If you'd like to confirm whether this message has been received and is in the mail queue awaiting delivery, go to Step 2. You are welcome to copy and paste the following message into your response. You may want to edit it to include the results of any other research you've done, such as confirming the message was received.
Our research indicates the mail server is working properly:
Mail is slow because the mail server is currently processing a high volume of mail.
The unusually high volume is due to a message that had a large attachment, was sent to a large number of recipients, or both.
This may be your message, or a message ahead of it in the queue.
If this message isn't received within the next two hours, please contact system support.
- No
Go to Step 2.
How to locate a message in the mail logs:
Use the Kavi Mailing List Manager Mail Delivery Logs tool to retrieve your website's mail logs.
Enter the sender's email address in the 'Search' text box and be sure to set the 'Search Time' parameter to 'Today' (unless you need to search back farther for some reason, since mail log searches can be quite time consuming), then click the Search button.
Keep this results page open for use in the next part of the troubleshooting process.
If you aren't sure how to read the mail log entries, click the Help icon on the Mail Log tool page for instructions.
Results
- Yes
Go to Step 3.
- No
The troubleshooting document 'Where Is this Message?' is temporarily unavailable. Please contact support. Stopping Point = EmailSlow(step2).
Determine whether the message is being processed correctly by checking the mail logs.
Track the delivery process through the mail logs:
Since the mail logs indicate the message was received by the website mail server, you can use the IDs assigned by qmail to follow the message through the different stages of delivery.
If the message was rejected for any reason, the answer is 'no'.
If the message entered the system and the logs indicate drops are occurring but are not yet complete, everything is normal, the answer is 'yes'.
If the message entered the system but the logs indicate a time lag of more than an hour between drops, the answer is 'no'.
If all drops have been performed, the delivery process is complete. The answer is 'yes'. However, if a particular individual indicates they still haven't received the message, see the flowchart for Why didn't Bob get this message?.
Results
- Yes
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Resolution: Everything is working normally. If you like, you can copy and paste the following information into your response.
Our research indicates email is working normally but your message is still in the delivery process.
The message has been received by the Web site mail server and is in the process of being delivered to the addresses on the recipients list.
If you do not receive this message within an hour, please contact system support for assistance.
If you are a digest subscriber, look for this message in the next digest.
- No
Go to Step 4.
Determine whether the message is being processed correctly by checking the mail logs.
Track the delivery process through the mail logs:
Since the mail logs indicate the message was received by the website mail server, you can use the IDs assigned by qmail to follow the message through the different stages of delivery.
If the message was rejected because it was.
If the message entered the system and the logs indicate drops are occurring but are not yet complete, everything is normal, the answer is 'yes'.
If the message entered the system but the logs indicate a time lag of more than an hour between drops, the answer is 'no'.
If all drops have been performed, the delivery process is complete. The answer is 'yes'. However, if a particular individual indicates they still haven't received the message, see the flowchart for Why didn't Bob get this message?.
Results
- Yes
Our research indicates email is working normally and the delivery process is complete.
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If you do not believe you have received this message, please double check the following:
Are you trying to verify message delivery by looking in the archives? Since many archives are only updated periodically, this isn't a reliable way to verify delivery.
Are you a digest subscriber? Check the next digest for this message.
Perhaps the message was delivered to but you didn't immediately recognize it by subject line or because your mail client unexpectedly filtered the message into the wrong mailbox or folder? Double check to see if you have it.
If you have more than one email address, are you looking for the message in the correct email account? Is your address entered correctly in the database? You can double check by logging into the My Account page.
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If none of these common situations apply, please contact support with the following information:
I was expecting to receive an email message, but it hasn't arrived.
My name is:
The email address where I expected to receive the message is:
The email message was sent (time, date, timezone):
The email message's subject line was:
Support has verified that message delivery was complete, but I don't have the message.
I have logged into the My Account page and verified that my email address is correct and that I'm checking for the message in the right account.
I have thoroughly checked my mail client and to the best of my knowledge, I do not have this message.
I am not a digest subscriber.
Please help me determine why I didn't get this message.
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- No
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Our research indicates your message was undeliverable:
This message was rejected because it wasn't properly addressed or wasn't well constructed.
You may receive a rejection notice, or your message may simply have been deleted.
Please correct and resend your message.
If this message was rejected by a mailing list, see Composing Email to Send to a List.
Stop: Contact system support.
Provide the following information to support:
A copy of the message, including the full headers (or at minimum: the date, time, timezone and subject). For instructions, see Accessing the Full Header for Email Troubleshooting.
If this message had an attachment, what was its file type and and how large was it?
Is there a particular individual who reports not receiving the message? If so, at what email address was the message expected?
Please forward the email you received from the person reporting the issue, along with any other potentially pertinent information you have.
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| Chapter 35. Why Didn't Bob Get this Email? |  |
Chapter 37. How Did this Message Get Through? |