Symptoms

The Kiwi mailer service stops running after a period of time. Messages are still appended to the queue but not sent out. By running the application in Standard Mode, the mail queue restarts and messages begin sending again.

InfoLog records Priority 1 error: "Mail error: [Date/Time] SMTP server did not acknowledge message before timeout [email location/name]"

Reason

A message in the mail queue has failed to be delivered successfully and the retry limit has been exceeded.

Failed emails sitting on the mail queue sometimes cause the mailer service to suspend itself, and thus create a backlog of new messages in the queue. As the service is restarted automatically when you re-open Kiwi CatTools in Standard Mode, the backlog then clears itself leaving just the failed message.

There are two likely causes to this problem which can be identified from checking the InfoLog.

i) The connection to the SMTP server you are using for relaying your email is timing out before the SMTP server has acknowledged successful sending of your message. Check the InfoLog for a Mail Error: line containing "SMTP server did not acknowledge message before timeout".
This is normally caused by an activity (e.g. Mac address table report) which exports a large amount of data and the options to send this data by email has been selected ("E-mail statistics/reports from the activity" option in Email tab of activity).

ii) A badly formed or invalid email address has been specified in the CatTools email setup, or as an alternative email address within an activity. Check in the InfoLog for the existence of the lines: "Report e-mail to: [specified email address] has been queued" or "Error notification e-mail has been sent to: [specified email address]"

[specified email address] MUST contain a valid email.

See KB article ERROR: Kiwi mailer service stops running after period of time

Resolution

1) Try increasing the Timeout field within the Primary SMTP Server Setup and Secondary SMTP Server Setup tab in the CatTools E-mail setup. The maximum value allowed is 60 seconds.

2) If the timeout doesn't work, it may be the SMTP server you are using is particularly slow, so you may prefer to try a different SMTP server, or download "Mail Direct" software from the web which sends emails direct bypassing your ISP's SMTP server.

3) If neither of the above work, try deselecting the "Attach additional report with sortable columns" option in the Email tab of the activity as this should reduce the email size by nearly half. If this still doesn't resolve the problem, deselect the "E-mail statistics/reports from the activity" option altogether.

Also, check the Kiwi Mailer Queue for the offending email and delete it from the queue. The email can be identified from a State value of "bad Data" or one which has reached its Retry limit.