Re: Intermittent 421 errors using UTL_SMTP

Rich,

I've seen similar problems with SMTP. In my case the problem turned out to be that the mail server would go through restarts that UTL_SMTP did not gracefully handle. Enough said -- I'd start by checking into exchange server maintenance windows.

On 10/22/07, Rich Jesse <rjoralist_at_society.servebeer.com> wrote:
>
> Hey all,
>
> I have a few PL/SQL procedures in 10.1.0.5.0 on AIX 5.3 that indirectly
> use
> UTL_SMTP to send out email (duh) through our Exchange server. The package
> that my procedures use to call UTL_SMTP is a slightly improved version of
> "maildemo.sql" (Google it).
>
> While this works fine most of the time, I have one weekly DBMS_SCHEDULER
> job
> that now consistently fails, while the other ten jobs work flawlessly.
> However, when I manually run the weekly job after a fail, it usually works
> (this morning I needed to run it twice). Since only this job fails, all
> other jobs work, and all jobs use the same entry point to UTL_SMTP, I
> believe that the mail server and related variables are correctly set.
> Here's the important part of the error stack:
>
> ORA-29278: SMTP transient error: ORA-29278: SMTP transient error: 421
> Service not available
> ORA-06512: at "SYS.UTL_SMTP", line 21
> ORA-06512: at "SYS.UTL_SMTP", line 97
> ORA-06512: at "SYS.UTL_SMTP", line 342
> ORA-06512: at "RICH.MAILDEMO", line 332
>
> UTL_SMTP is wrapped, so I can't say what those lines are, but the line my
> package fails on (called "RICH.MAILDEMO" here) is calling
> "UTL_SMTP.CLOSE_DATA".
>
> This seems to happen when the instance has a lot of activity, but IMHO
> nowhere near peak. As I don't have visibility to the Exchange server
> performance, I can't speak to that. Also, I see that the parameter
> "tx_timeout" in the call to UTL_SMTP.OPEN_CONNECTION is not present, which
> should default to a NULL, or "wait indefinitely", according to the docs.
> There is also mention in the package comments that this parameter may not
> affect writes as documented, but it doesn't say what the implemented
> handling is. Finally, since this is from a DBMS_SCHEDULER job, I don't
> believe it would qualify for BUG 4083461.
>
> Anyone have some ideas on how to troubleshoot this? While it's not a
> priority, the intent of the job is to automate the report, which it's now
> not doing...
>
> TIA!
> Rich
>
> --
> http://www.freelists.org/webpage/oracle-l
>
>
>

-- 
Rumpi Gravenstein

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