Field Notice: FN - 64140 - Email Security Appliance (ESA) - Email Queue Corruption - Software Upgrade Required

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Updated:June 9, 2016

Document ID:FN64140

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NOTICE:

THIS FIELD NOTICE IS PROVIDED ON AN "AS IS" BASIS AND DOES NOT IMPLY ANY KIND OF GUARANTEE OR WARRANTY, INCLUDING THE WARRANTY OF MERCHANTABILITY. YOUR USE OF THE INFORMATION ON THE FIELD NOTICE OR MATERIALS LINKED FROM THE FIELD NOTICE IS AT YOUR OWN RISK. CISCO RESERVES THE RIGHT TO CHANGE OR UPDATE THIS FIELD NOTICE AT ANY TIME.

Revision History

Revision	Date	Comment
1.0	09-JUN-2016	Initial Public Release

Products Affected

Products Affected
C160 -
C170 -
C190 -
C360 -
C370 -
C380 -
C390 -
C660 -
C670 -
C680 -
C690 -
X1060 -
X1070 -
- 9.1.0
- 9.1.1
- 9.5.0
- 9.6.0
- 9.7.0

Problem Description

In the event of a Hermes crash or improper shutdown (for example, a lockup or hard reboot), some customers might encounter email queue corruption. If corruption occurs, incoming and outgoing emails are not processed.

Background

Some new flags have been added to the messages as part of the Graymail feature. In some cases, the validation for these flags has been found to fail as the result of this defect.

Problem Symptoms

The problem symptoms are:

Email queue corruption and emails are no longer processed.
This error is seen in 'error_logs' and an alert is sent to the administrators:

Fri Sep 11 20:11:21 2015 Critical: An application fault occurred: ('egg/Message.py dump|2579', "", '22078817377', '[egg/smtp_server.py main|702] [egg/smtp_server.py cmd_data|2666] [egg/message_scanner.py enqueue_body_done|159] [egg/Message.py enqueue_body_done|1329] [egg/gcq.py enqueue_body|1482] [egg/gcq.py write|672] [egg/gcq.py next_gen_safe|1087] [egg/gcq.py checkpoint|808] [egg/Message.py dump|2579]') MID: 154389

Workaround/Solution

Upgrade to version 9.7.1 or later in order to protect against the email queue corruption issue.

The best workaround is to keep proper power on the appliance. If the appliance has too many improper shutdowns, the email queue becomes corrupt. Customers that encounter this condition due to a system crash can contact TAC in order to have the queue repaired. Note that not all queue corruptions can be repaired. If it is not possible, TAC will delete the old queue and create a new one.

Customers can also run the CLI resetqueue command. This command removes the corrupted queue and all quarantines (except Spam Quarantine) and replaces it with a new queue for email processing and new quarantines.

CDETS

To follow the bug ID link below and see detailed bug information, you must be a registered customer and you must be logged in.

CDETS	Description
CSCuw22284 (registered customers only)	Email queue corrupts after hermes crash or improper shutdown

For More Information

If you require further assistance, or if you have any further questions regarding this field notice, please contact the Cisco Systems Technical Assistance Center (TAC) by one of the following methods:

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