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We've had email trouble for awhile. Today I talked directly with a client and went through an entire walkthrough setting up the same version of outlook. The client was still unable to send/receive while my account on the same server worked fine. The mail logs revealed that the server could not establish an SMTP connection on her end.

I suspected a firewall or similar connection issue on her end, but she reports the issue exists on her iPad and even for another client who lives in a different state. The fact that she can connect to the server, but the server can't establish an SMTP connection worries me.

I'm not familiar with Qmail or server administration for that matter, but I did locate something odd in the mail log. The ID that appears after the keyword "qmail-remote-handlers" shared an ID with a previous "relaylock" coming from a website "host-warez.info". As you might expect, I have no idea what this domain is.

Our mail server is Qmail, and we use plesk 10.1.1. Our server is running Linux 2.6.18-028stab101.1.

The mail logs are below, notice the 28522. I've obviously anonymized the client's email address

Nov 13 09:12:03 /var/qmail/bin/relaylock[28522]: /var/qmail/bin/relaylock: mail from 176.61.137.157:4169 (host-warez.info)
--- snip ---
Nov 13 14:08:46 qmail-remote-handlers[28522]: Handlers Filter before-remote for qmail started ...
Nov 13 14:08:46 qmail-remote-handlers[28522]: from=a****@****.org
Nov 13 14:08:46 qmail-remote-handlers[28522]: to=a****@****.net
Nov 13 14:08:46 qmail-remote-handlers[28522]: hook_dir = '/usr/local/psa/handlers/before-remote'
Nov 13 14:08:46 qmail-remote-handlers[28522]: recipient[3] = 'a****@****.net'
Nov 13 14:08:46 qmail-remote-handlers[28522]: handlers dir = '/usr/local/psa/handlers/before-remote/recipient/a****@****.net'
Nov 13 14:08:46 qmail: 1384380526.764369 delivery 9816: deferral: Sorry,_I_wasn't_able_to_establish_an_SMTP_connection._(#4.4.1)/
Nov 13 14:08:46 qmail: 1384380526.764621 status: local 0/10 remote 0/20

So I guess my question is: What is a relaylock? How might the relaylock affect a single email account? And does anything in this mail log look out of the ordinary?

I'm not sure if there is enough information here to find anything useful, and frankly I don't know where to look next.

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I believe relaylock is a utility that comes with Plesk, there are a lot of details about it here: http://www.davideous.com/smtp-poplock/distrib/smtp-poplock-2.05/README

I'm not sure about the host-warez.info but as Michael Hampton says, pids get recycled (that would be the process ID, 28522, in your logs.) And they get recycled faster on busier mail servers. I don't think the two things are related.

Since relaylock is designed to allow SMTP mail relaying if the user has authenticated with POP3 shortly before the SMTP connection .. do you know if the customer is successfully checking (with POP3 or IMAP) her mailbox before trying to send a message? If mailbox checking is not working (or not being attempted) then the relaylock would not allow her IP address to relay mail out through the SMTP server.

You should see if the "readlog" process mentioned in the link is running, and all that sort of stuff too.

If all else fails I believe you could pay Parallels (or others) for Plesk support.

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