Random Server Error (Net::SSLeay)

[Lure79]

Hello,

We have a OTRS setup for internal use but sometimes when sending a email from a ticket we get a "Internal Server Error" from apache. We can't see any pattern exactly when/why this occurs, there can be a full day of sending lots of mail without this happening.

The error:
"Internal Server Error
The server encountered an internal error or misconfiguration and was unable to complete your request.
Please contact the server administrator, [no address given] and inform them of the time the error occurred, and anything you might have done that may have caused the error.
More information about this error may be available in the server error log."

The error message don't give many clues but i each time someone get this error we get the following line in /var/log/apache2/error.log:

[Fri Jan 17 08:47:12 2014] [error] Net::SSLeay: verify_callback called, but not set to point to any perl function.\n


The server is a Ubuntu 12.04 Server with no other purpose then running OTRS. We're using OTRS 3.3.3.

The server is up to date, otrs.CheckModules.pl shows no problems...

At this point my personal theory is that the problem is that we've set up OTRS to use Office365 for incoming/outgoing email. Some problem with logging in on the Office365 mail servers that OTRS can't handle... There will be a interal server set up to relay the email in the coming month or two that I hope will fix the problem but I don't feel completely sure it will.

But I would like to ask here if anyone has any clue what could be going on.

[Lure79]

Ok we actually set up a local postfix relay today to Office365 from the OTRS server so OTRS don't have to "wait" for anything when sending mail. We will se if this problem goes away now.

[seberget2]

The error:
"Internal Server Error
The server encountered an internal error or misconfiguration and was unable to complete your request.
Please contact the server administrator, [no address given] and inform them of the time the error occurred, and anything you might have done that may have caused the error.
More information about this error may be available in the server error log."

The error message don't give many clues but i each time someone get this error we get the following line in /var/log/apache2/error.log:

[Fri Jan 17 08:47:12 2014] [error] Net::SSLeay: verify_callback called, but not set to point to any perl function.\n


The server is a Ubuntu 12.04 Server with no other purpose then running OTRS. We're using OTRS 3.3.3.

We see the same thing towards gmail. Anyone else seen this, and have suggestion to what to do with it, other than setting up Postfix.

[Lure79]

We see the same thing towards gmail. Anyone else seen this, and have suggestion to what to do with it, other than setting up Postfix.

Not a answer to your question but I have to say that after setting up a local postfix relay the "joy" of working in OTRS went waaay up. No delays whatsoever when creating tickets or any other article that generates email, OTRS became lightning fast to work with compared to when we send directly via microsofts mail server. I really have to recomend running OTRS with a local/in-house mail server of some kind.

[crythias]

I really have to recomend running OTRS with a local/in-house mail server of some kind.

Ditto this. Also, once you set up instant tickets -- procmail is rather easy, and there's even a way to do it for Windows -- you really don't want to do it any other way.

[seberget2]

Not a answer to your question but I have to say that after setting up a local postfix relay the "joy" of working in OTRS went waaay up.

OK, we will follow your advice and do the same, just that local for us would be to do it on the EC2 We use postfix on others there so it should be a OK solution for us to use.

[RobArk]

Ok we actually set up a local postfix relay today to Office365 from the OTRS server so OTRS don't have to "wait" for anything when sending mail. We will se if this problem goes away now.

We see the same thing towards gmail. Anyone else seen this, and have suggestion to what to do with it, other than setting up Postfix.

Not a answer to your question but I have to say that after setting up a local postfix relay the "joy" of working in OTRS went waaay up. No delays whatsoever when creating tickets or any other article that generates email, OTRS became lightning fast to work with compared to when we send directly via microsofts mail server. I really have to recomend running OTRS with a local/in-house mail server of some kind.

So am I to interpret this response as that your problems did go away after setting up a local postfix relay?

Presumably this error is caused by a timer being hit because the mail server isn't responding quickly enough. Does anyone know where this timer is most likely to reside?

[seberget2]

So am I to interpret this response as that your problems did go away after setting up a local postfix relay?

Yes.

Presumably this error is caused by a timer being hit because the mail server isn't responding quickly enough. Does anyone know where this timer is most likely to reside?

i have not bothered to search for it. Probably somewhere in the sendmail.pl (or similar location). The reason: This is a synchronous call, that means OTRS waits for this call to finish before returning the control to the user. Postfix returns a reply instantly improving on the over all user experience.

[Lure79]

Just a followup for the record: The problems we had completely went away after using a local postfix relay on the same server as OTRS is running on.

As mentioned above OTRS probably locks up while trying to send the emails and I assume there are timeouts and number of retries involved here. However, even if this could be reconfigured to have OTRS try a few more times or wait longer I don't think that would be a good solution as "lock" times would just be longer and very annoying for the agent. Remember that the root cause is the slow reply of the microsoft servers. When looking for the cause of this problem I often saw OTRS trying 4-5 different servers until it could send the email (or fail).

A proper fix in OTRS would be to have the emails sent as separate jobs in the background as not to lock up the agent interface. But I'm not sure it would be very high on my wishlist for OTRS features as you can set up a relay of your own to do the same thing.