"Error: User not on post office [D101]" repeatedly reported on the POA

"Error: User not on post office [D101]" shows up repeatedly on the POA and in the POA log files and the disk space used by the post office continually increases.

 

08:37:37 1B5C Distribute message from: user1
08:37:37 1B5C Begin distribution to 1 users
08:37:37 1B5C Error: User not on post office [D101]
08:37:37 1B5C   Created : .\wpcsin\5\53046d51.ls1, 1820 bytes Message ID(5304B394.2A6:166:579080)
08:37:37 1B5C   Sender of message (.\wpcsin\5\53046d51.ls1) user1
08:37:37 1B5C MTP: Sender thread started for link dom2: 3 running
08:37:37 1B5C   Created : .\wpcsin\5\53046d51.ls3, 1684 bytes Message ID(5304B394.2A6:166:579080)
08:37:37 1B5C   Sender of message (.\wpcsin\5\53046d51.ls3) user1
08:37:37 1B5C MTP: Sender thread started for link dom2: 4 running
08:37:37 10D8 MTP: dom2: Connection established: testpo.lab.novell.com
08:37:37 1B5C Purge message record #16 
08:37:37 1B5C  Processed OK

 

This email was sent to a user who should belong on this post office, but the post office thinks it belongs on a different post office, thus when the user is sent a message, the message is forwarded back to the originating post office and purged from this one.

 

When a message is written to the post office, the attachment is written first, then the message body to the message database and last the pointer to the user database is written. In this case the user is undeliverable and the message is purged from the message database, but the attachment is left to be cleaned up by GWCheck later. A simple contents check on the post office will detect these orphaned blob files after 3 days and delete them to reclaim the disk space.

 

 

This problem happened after an expired user was moved to a new post office. The move failed and stuck in a "Destination domain updated" status. The destination domain and destination post office still showed the user as belonging to the source post office. Thus when a message was sent to this expired user, instead of rejecting the mail with an "Error: User account is expired [D023]" the POA reported a D101, user not found, and forwarded the mail back to the source post office.

 

The source post office, showing the user as belonging to the target, forwarded the mail back to the target post office and the mail continues to loop between the two indefinitely.

 

To fix the issue, rebuild the target domain and post office. The mails will then get rejected with the D023 error and the loop will be broken.

 

It is recommended that expired users are removed from any distribution lists as they will still be sent emails as part of groups which will get rejected by the POA anyway.