Repeated tickets from one email

[TheNewFallGuy]

Hi,

I have been using (and administering) OTRS for more than 5 years. I have just installed 3.2.10 on a new server and am having a strange problem discovered while testing this new version.

As a test, I sent an email into the new system. OTRS read the email, created a new ticket and sent an acknowledgement. Then, every hour since (at 30 minutes past the hour), OTRS has created another new ticket and acknoweldgement from the exact same email - I received 15 acknowledgements overnight!

I am assuming I have misconfigured something, but it is a very basic configuration:
- OTRS is running on Linux (an Amazon AWS server). I installed from noarch.rpm version
- OTRS mail account is hosted in Office365. OTRS is successfully sending and receiving emails through this account (using POP3 and SMTPTLS)
- I setup the standard cron jobs using "bin/Cron.pl start otrs". I have confirmed the email is being read every 10 minutes

What I don't understand is
- why this new ticket is being created from an already read email
- why it is only doing this once per hour at 30 minutes past the hour - there are no specific cron jobs running at that time, only the GenericAgent and PostMasterMailbox jobs:
*/10 * * * * $HOME/bin/otrs.GenericAgent.pl -c db >> /dev/null
*/10 * * * * $HOME/bin/otrs.PostMasterMailbox.pl >> /dev/null

Can anybody help me figure out what is going wrong?

Thanks!

[reneeb]

Any log messages? (OTRS-Log, Cronjob log, ...)

[TheNewFallGuy]

Thanks for the response.

Looking in the Syslog, there is a clue:

every 10 minutes, I see
OTRS-otrs.PostMasterMailbox.pl-10 Can't create PID PostMasterMailbox, because it's already running (mydomain.com/31124)!

And then every hour (on the 30minutes)
OTRS-otrs.PostMasterMailbox.pl-10 Removed PID (PostMasterMailbox/mydomain.com/31124, because 1 hour old!
followed by
OTRS-otrs.PostMasterMailbox.pl-10 New Ticket [2013092710000122/another test] created (TicketID=29,Queue=Support,Priority=3 normal,State=new)

So it looks like the PostMasterMailbox job is not shutting down, it gets killed after an hour and then 'finds' the email again, so creates the new ticket.

Any ideas why the PostMasterMailbox job is not shutting down?

[StarDestroyer]

Obviously it's logging in correctly. And it's reading the message correctly. I haven't looked at the code, but I'm pretty sure the next step is that it deletes the message from the mailbox. That must be where the hang-up is because it's obviously not deleting the message (it's still in the mailbox after the process gets terminated and then restarted).

[TheNewFallGuy]

No, it should not delete the email from the mailbox - at least my other OTRS installation does not. It relies on Pop to know whether an email has been fetched or not...

Any other thoughts or ideas on why the PostMasterMailbox job is not terminating?

[crythias]

all fetched messages should delete from the inbox.

[TheNewFallGuy]

Sorry, but I do not think that is correct.

Our existing OTRS installation uses a GMAIL account for the support email. Every support email we have ever received (many thousands) is still in the inbox, and we do not have this problem.

I suspect there is something odd with Exchange email configuration...

[crythias]

OTRS is designed to be the end and sole repository of all emails going to it. No human should be needed to look at that inbox.

While you don't have the problem, it's not designed as you use it. The inbox should be dedicated to OTRS.

[TheNewFallGuy]

I have switched the email account to use a gmail account in the same domain as our current, working system. This appears to have the same underlying problem that the Syslog reports as
Tue Oct 1 14:10:03 2013 notice OTRS-otrs.PostMasterMailbox.pl-10 Can't create PID PostMasterMailbox, because it's already running (mydomain.com/1908)!

Is there a problem with 3.2.10?

[TheNewFallGuy]

After many hours, I have tracked down the problem.

The issue was the FQDN of the website is not the same as the domain for the email.

To fix, I had to change SysConfig->Framework->Core->NotificationSenderEmail to use the email domain instead of the <OTRS_CONFIG_FQDN> 'macro'. Once I fixed that, everything sprang to life, and worked as it should have! It is strange that this was causing so many problems.

Thanks for your assistance.

[mraghur]

Hi,

I have the same problem. Mails are not getting deleted.

Until about few hours back it was working no changes where made to OTRS.
Email where properly getting deleted after fetching. Suddenly it stopped
deleting but the email is fetched in to the ticket. Please let me know what
could be a problem here.

Here is how the log looks like


Wed Nov 18 06:25:01 2015 notice OTRS-otrs.Scheduler-25 Scheduler Daemon
status request! PID 1382
Wed Nov 18 06:23:42 2015 info OTRS-CGI-25 Sent agent 'Ticket State Update'
notification to 'xxx@xxx.com'.
Wed Nov 18 06:21:09 2015 info OTRS-CGI-25 Sent agent 'ResponsibleUpdate'
notification to 'xxx@xxx.com.
Wed Nov 18 06:20:56 2015 info OTRS-CGI-25 Sent agent 'Move' notification to
'xxx@xxx.com'.
Wed Nov 18 06:20:56 2015 info OTRS-CGI-25 Sent agent 'Move' notification to
'xxx@xxx.com'.
Wed Nov 18 06:20:17 2015 info OTRS-otrs.PostMasterMailbox.pl-25 POP3S:
Fetched 1 email(s) from xxx@xxx.com/outlook.office365.com.
Wed Nov 18 06:20:16 2015 notice OTRS-otrs.PostMasterMailbox.pl-25 FollowUp
Article to Ticket [2501332] created (TicketID=1352, ArticleID=14660). ,
Wed Nov 18 06:20:16 2015 info OTRS-otrs.PostMasterMailbox.pl-25 Sent agent
'FollowUp' notification to 'xxx@xxx.com'.
Wed Nov 18 06:20:16 2015 info OTRS-otrs.PostMasterMailbox.pl-25 Sent agent
'FollowUp' notification to 'xxx@xxx.com'.
Wed Nov 18 06:20:16 2015 info OTRS-otrs.PostMasterMailbox.pl-25 Sent agent
'FollowUp' notification to 'xxx@xxx.com'.
Wed Nov 18 06:20:04 2015 notice OTRS-otrs.GenericAgent.pl-25 Run
GenericAgent Job 'trigger escalation events' from config file.
Wed Nov 18 06:20:04 2015 notice OTRS-otrs.GenericAgent.pl-25 Run
GenericAgent Job 'send escalation notifications' from config file.
Wed Nov 18 06:20:03 2015 notice OTRS-otrs.Scheduler-25 Scheduler Daemon
status request! PID 1382

Thanks,
Raghu

[iRazoR]

Hi mraghur,

according to your logs you seem to use Office365 Exchange Server. Microsoft has currently (actually since 16th of November) Problems with their Exchange Infrastructure which may cause the problem. We recognized the same problem with our OTRS Ticketsystem some hours ago.

Microsoft Problem Number is EX34383

I hope they will fix the problem soon and your (and our) ticketproblem is also fixed then.