Errant Route.cfg Causes Messages to Defer After 450 Host Down Error on GWIA

  • 7024870
  • 19-Oct-2020
  • 19-Oct-2020

Environment

GroupWise 18
GroupWise 2014 R2
GroupWise 2014

Situation

An outbound Internet message can use the route.cfg to identify the host to deliver to instead of using a dns lookup.  If the host to deliver to has been changed by the receiving side or is down for an extended period of time, the messages that have already been deferred will continue to attempt to the address specified in the route.cfg file.

Resolution

This is working as designed.  When the message is first sent to the GWIA daemon process, the hostname for the destination is written to the header of the message to be sent.  It does not get regenerated on each attempt.  

It is generally best to limit the time GWIA attempts to retry a message if given a 400 level error of any type.  This can be done by modifying the field "Maximum Number of Hours to Retry a  Deferred Message" and "Intervals to Retry a Deferred Message".  

The administrator should frequently check the route.cfg file to make sure that the destinations are still valid.