Troubles with setting up incoming email

Question

Hello folks! 

I am currently having issues setting up SP2010 Enterprise incoming email.  I previously had SP Foundations with incoming email working wonderfully.  When upgrading from Foundations to Enterprise, we installed on a fresh server rather than do the in place upgrade.

Environment has Exchange 2010, SP 2010 Enterprise, 2003 level AD.

I followed the instructions located on this website: http://sharepointgeorge.com/2010/configuring-incoming-email-sharepoint-2010/ step by step, did everything there.  Because I used the same service accounts and had it previously working, I didn't do the AD permissions modifications for the farm account (and contact objects are created properly).

Settings for the send connector on exchange can be seen in images here: http://imgur.com/a/EsDqZ

Settings for the SMTP server on the SharePoint server are identical to those found in the above instructional link.

I have also matched all settings on the Exchange server and SMTP server up with what I had in place for the SP Foundations system.

From the exchange server, I am able to telnet to the SP server and send a message, which the SP list picks up successfully.

However, when I attempt to send an email to the SP list (from either Outlook, or telnet into the exchange server) I receive this: (edited from 1 line to two, for readability). The IP at the beginning which is cut off, is the IP to the SharePoint\SMTP Server

Here's settings from SP's incoming email setup page:

I'm at a loss here; Everything looks identical to how I had it setup for my previous SP system (with system names and IP's changed, of course) but it's still not working...

Answer 1

Well, I used the same article, had the same issue but got it working on my development server.

But for the life of me I cannot seem to remember what I did to get it working and now I am having the exact same issue as you do, while trying to set it up on my production server.

Anyways Ill post back if I figure it out.

Answer 2

thanks!  I sort of recall having a similar issue when I setup my foundations system, but I had it working.  I know for certain that the SMTP server settings on my old foundations box and the new enterprise box are identical.  When I made changes in Exchange for the send connector, I just changed the server name/ip from the old one to the new one.  I also have a foundations dev box setup (and working with incoming email as far as I know) that I can compare stuff to (everything I've looked at looks the same so far).

I re-created the send connector in Exchange for my old foundations box (since I had used the original one when making the new one) and after recreating that send connector, i got the same errors sending to my foundations box.  I'm thinking that it's gotta be some setting in Exchange.  That's all that changed between incoming mail working on my foundations box and it not working there.  I'd like to get both of them working so I can use the foundations box as a test system at some point...  I just cant figure out what the hell needs to be changed so far...

Answer 3

Daniel_Ceola

Fixed it!!

The error from the event viewer pushed me to set up the drop directory in incoming email settings in the central administration.

Take a look at the screenshots.They are pretty self-explanatory.

All I did was change it from automatic to advanced and specify the drop directory.

Let me know if this works for you.

Answer 4

I just looked through my SP server's event log and don't see any errors like that. I set it to advanced and punched in the drop folder anyway; however I'm still getting the same error on my exchange server. It's like my exchange just can't contact the SP smtp server through the smart host connector...

Answer 5

Do you mind putting up a screenshot of the error you are getting in the event logs?

Answer 6

the errors in my event log seem unrelated - one VSS error, a WMI query error, SP Health Analyzer error that drives are running low on free space (7gb is low, i guess). I've got nothing in my exchange server logs.

Answer 7

Is your sharepoint server on a public domain?

Is the WMI error showing up everytime you try to send a mail.

Could you try tracking the message to see how far it gets with the 'Message tracker' in Exchange Manager?

Here is a screenshot to get you there.

Answer 8

the wmi error is not showing up everytime I try to send something; in fact I can only find one instance of this error.

SP Server is only part of our corporate domain; and only accessible internally.  Message tracking logs show me the below for the most recent test message:

it doesn't really seem that helpful.. :/ this has me baffled. if I couldn't telnet to the smtp server on my SP box From my exchange box, the error code in exchange would at least make sense to me...

Answer 9

Daniel

I am out of ideas for now. But I will post back if i think of anything worthwhile. Sorry.

Answer 10

Thank you for the help so far. I decided to cross-post this to the Exchange forum, since this seems to be more of an exchange/smtp issue than it is a SP issue. Post is at: http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en/exchange2010/thread/b5778ce3-ba00-4e11-b2e1-2958d85dc71a

Answer 11

Your welcome. Thanks for providing me with the link.

Good luck

Answer 12

I uninstalled SMTP from the SP server, rebooted it - reinstalled SMTP per instructions in the above links; deleted the send connectors, recreated them and Exchange is still failing to send email to SMTP on my SP server.  I can still telnet to the smtp server and send successfully.  I'm going to reboot the Exchange server tonight just in case that makes any difference whatsoever.

Answer 13

Daniel

Looks like you are having a tough time!

The last time I had issues on my Development machine, a SMTP reinstall did it for me.

Answer 14

yep.. if I don't have it going come Monday, I'm going to see if I can get approval to call MS support.  It's not an issue with SP, I don't believe it's an issue with SMTP either. I think it's all exchange.  I re-created the send connector to my old/test foundations system (the one I disabled the send connector for, when I installed SP Enterprise on my new server; and was working as of when I removed the connector) - and it won't work either... so - that makes me think it's Exchange causing the issue.  Hopefully a reboot (going to do win updates on it at the same time) will help.

Answer 15

What does the IIS SMTP service look like on your SharePoint Server acting as the Smart Host?  Do you have any authentication/access restrictions in place on the SMTP service that would deny access for Exchange to send to it?

Is there anything in the BadMail folder on the SharePoint Server?

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http://sharepoint.nauplius.net

Answer 16

No authentication or access restrictions enabled on the SMTP. I can successfully telnet from exchange server to SP server and send a message through the smtp. Nothing in badmail.

Screenshots of SMTP settings on SP server here: http://imgur.com/a/CFcp2

Answer 17

I take it you also applied the proper NTFS security settings to the mail drop folder for your Timer Service and App Pool account(s)?

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http://sharepoint.nauplius.net

Answer 18

Yup.

When i send a message via telnet into the SP/SMTP server, SharePoint picks up the email and attaches it to the approriate list correctly.  IMO it seems more like an Exchange issue than anything else...

Answer 19

You're right.  Take the brackets off of the Smart Host server name ("[blackedout]" to "blackedout").  Or, set up a proper MX record internally to route mail.

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http://sharepoint.nauplius.net

Answer 20

The send connector setup added the brackets around that IP address on its own (also put brackets there when i entered the fqdn instead of IP).  Earlier today, I actually changed that send connector to use MX records, and have correct MX records setup; but get the same error in the mail queue. nslookup shows the correct IP coming back for the mx record. 

So basically, so far it makes no difference if the send connector is set to use MX record, smart host with fqdn or smart host with ip, it's giving me the same error each way.

Answer 21

With MX, have you tried setting "Use External DNS Lookup..." and restarting the Transport Service?  Also, do you have WINS in the environment?

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http://sharepoint.nauplius.net

Answer 22

When i set it to use external, i get bounce messages immediately - our external DNS lookup is set to our ISP's dns.  I'm not sure if we have WINS or not. If we do, I've never had to do anything with it before (been with this company ~1yr)

Answer 23

So the Transport Hub has DNS IPs on the NIC set to DNS servers external to your org?

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http://sharepoint.nauplius.net

Answer 24

we only have a 1 server exchange environment, if it makes any diff. The NIC has local DNS server IP's attached. Exchange server has ISP DNS servers entered as the External dns lookup, and has internal dns lookup set to the NIC IP's.

Answer 25

Only other thing, is "Email Server Display Address" @"sp<something>.net" or @"<something>.net"?

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http://sharepoint.nauplius.net

Answer 26

Tried it both ways. I've had it work both ways on my old SP server.  It's currently set to sp.domain.net (did that when i redid all of the config this morning).

Answer 27

So I was able to reboot the Exchange server lastnight - and it looks like everything is now working.   I'm not sure if restarting any single Exchange service would have fixed it - but rebooting the server certainly did.

Thank you all for the assistance in working through this. I guess I should have tried to reboot the server sooner (although I didn't really think it necessary, since all that was done was to remove one send connector and add another).

Answer 28

Glad you got it fixed!