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Utility exit code messages in the Utility Stats page
Answer ID 1067   |   Last Review Date 11/09/2023

What are the various exit code messages in the Utility Stats page?

Environment:

Techmail
Oracle B2C Service

Resolution:

From the Oracle B2C Service pages at cx.rightnow.com, click the My Site Tools link.  Verify your credentials and then click Utility Stats under the Hosting Services section. For details steps refer to Answer ID 4551: How do I check my own Utilities when I want to know the status?. With regard to the techmail utility specifically, users can click the techmail link for a specific interface, which displays information about the most recent techmail runs for that interface. The table gives the run date for the utility, the run time, the exit code, and a brief message regarding the run's execution. Please note, some of these messages are general notifications and can apply to the run logs of other utilities as well. Definitions for the possible messages is listed below:

 
No Error: This message indicates that the utility ran satisfactorily. 
 

Exceeds concurrent utilities per db server, retrying later

OR

Per DB server concurrent utility lock. Re-queuing. Not an error.

This message is simply a warning regarding the workers assigned to each database server. This message means that all workers assigned to the queue are currently processing other jobs. These jobs will continue to wait in queue until a worker is available to process them. The retry interval in this scenario is very short.


It is possible to get a couple of these messages in a row depending on the load on the utility and the utility schedule (especially with the retry interval being so short). If you see these messages extending for long periods of time with no successful runs in between, you can contact Technical Support for further investigation.

 

Locked. This task is already running / Lock file exists: As part of our utility scripts, we place a "lock file" in each interface directory on the server while a utility is running for a given interface. This prevents utilities from running twice on the same data.

It is possible to get a couple of these messages in a row depending on the load on the utility and the utility schedule. This is not an error, and is expected behavior.

Interface is in broken sites: This error means that your utility is not running. The common causes for this error message are due to an issue with the utility which most times is resolved by upgrading to the latest version of CX.

Hosting monitors the "broken sites" list and will resolve issues and/or proactively create an incident to resolve the issue and move the utility to no-utils. 
 

Interface is in no-utils: This message means that a member of the Hosting group has put your interface into the "no-utils" list. This list is used by Hosting to unconditionally prevent a utility from being run against any given interface.  When a utility is in no-utils, an incident has been created, and Technical Support is actively working on the issue.

Cannot execute utility: The most common reasons for this message is that your site has been put into "maintenance mode" or an interface has been disabled.
 

Error connecting to socket: This error generally means that techmail is trying to access a non Oracle B2C Service hosted mailbox and the firewall protecting your mail server is not allowing our connection through, or an unsupported port is being used on an OCI datacenter.

The fix for this is to have your IT department add the appropriate exception on your firewall on port 110 or 995. We do not suggest that an exception(s) is made for an IP address or individual server name but rather for the proper domain such as *.rightnowtech.com, as indicated in Solutions for safelisting our mail servers.  For more information, refer to the 'Networking Requirements' section of the Infrastructure Requirements documentation for the version your site is currently running.  Infrastructure documentation is available via Answer ID 31: Oracle Service Cloud Infrastructure Requirements

For sites located on OCI datacenters, port 110 is unsupported. Refer to What you need to know about migrating to the Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) for more information.  To ensure communication is on port 995 all non-Oracle B2C Service hosted mailboxes must have mailbox Security SSL Method set to 'Using pop3 SSL port" by going to Configuration --> Site Configuration --> Mailboxes --> select mailbox --> click Security (button in ribbon) --> select "Using pop3 SSL port" in SSL Method dropdown. 

In the case that this error is encountered on an internally hosted mailbox, it is typically caused by an internal infrastructure issue. 

PASS (MailBox Open state): 

Intermittent errors of this type can occur when the mailbox is being accessed internally and is already open.  This is common when emails are received in quick succession and techmail encounters a mailbox lock when trying to connect to the mailbox to process another email, such as with Techmail On Demand for Oracle-hosted mailboxes (Answer ID 8745: What is Techmail On Demand?).  An Error Log entry is also recorded which also indicates the cause being multiple (simultaneous) logins.


For non-Oracle-hosted mailboxes the most common cause of this error is that your mailboxes table has an incorrect password for one of your pop accounts. When the error occurs due to a password failure the error messages will continue until the password is fixed.  However, intermittent or self correcting errors of this type can be ignored.
If you have multiple mailboxes and the error occurs consistently, please submit an Ask Technical Support to Technical Support to investigate which mailbox has the incorrect password 

*Note: Passwords for mailboxes cannot be more than 20 characters. This will cause the  PASS (MailBox Open state) message to appear.

USER (MailBox Open state): Is similar to PASS (MailBox Open state) and usually caused by your mailboxes table having an incorrectly specified pop account or problems with the access to a specific account. Intermittent or self correcting errors of this type can also be ignored.
 
RETR (Get message state): This message indicates an issue retrieving an email.  If you notice this issue for an Oracle-hosted mailbox then Ask Technical Support and we will review the mailbox contents and the email files.  Typically this is a temporary issue that self-resolves on the next techmail connection to the mailbox, as such, intermittent or self-correcting errors of this type can be ignored.  The utility exit status is RETR (Get message state), but the corresponding Error Notification is usually : 
<interface> : Mailbox <pop account>: Network Error or 
<interface> : Mailbox <pop account>: POP3 RETR command failed.
 
If you notice this issue for an external, non-Oracle-hosted mailbox, then review the emails in your mailbox and make sure none of them appear corrupted or malformed.  If you are unsure which specific mailboxes and emails are impacted you can Ask Technical Support and we can provide the specific mailbox(es) impacted as well as the size of the email associated with this message.
 
Can't map POP Server to Host IP: This is a common error where one of the pop servers in your mailboxes has an invalid host name in it. The most common host name that we see as invalid is "server".

To fix this either configure the mailbox correctly with the proper host name or delete or disable this mailbox.
 
Maximum allowed errors processing messages: This message is seen when the number of message processor failures exceed the allotted limit for any given run of techmail. When message processor encounters an unrecoverable error an incident with the subject "Error Processing Incident" is created to retain the data.
 
A message processor failure can be caused by many things so a limit is placed on the number of failures that can be encountered in a single run of techmail (typically three) in order to prevent intermittent issues or faulty customizations creating a mass number of "Error Processing Email" incidents.
 
In any event, a small percentage of message processor failures will be unavoidable and is considered expected behavior especially on sites with large amounts of traffic. As such, you should always have an internal business process for handling these types of incidents and routing them properly. For additional information regarding potential causes and impacts of "Error Processing Email" incidents please review Answer ID 743: Error Processing Email or Invalid Message error in an incident.
 
 

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