XCON: MTA: Mail Delivery Slow and Disk Space Consumed

• Microsoft Exchange Server, version 4.0

SYMPTOMS

Microsoft Exchange Message Transfer Agent (MTA) operations become very slow and mail delivery appears to stop. The following Event might be written to the Applications event log:

   Event ID: 9411
   Source:   MSExchangeMTA
   Type:     Error
   Category: Field Engineering
   Description:
   The MTA is terminating because the disk where MTADATA is located has
   less than 10 MB of space, or an error occurred while trying to check for
   free space on the disk. If disk space is low, free up some disk space
   and restart the MTA. NT Error code returned: 0(non-zero indicates an
   error while checking for free space)[BASE IL TIMER 3](16)

CAUSE

The Microsoft Exchange Server can experience a problem in which the MTADATA directory begins to fill with numerous files. The files appear to be normal .DAT files except for their sizes. The file sizes become progressively larger and can reach sizes greater than 20 megabytes. If this goes unnoticed, the files will fill the available disk space.

STATUS

Microsoft has confirmed this to be a problem in Microsoft Exchange Server version 4.0. This problem was corrected in the latest Microsoft Exchange Service Pack. For information on obtaining the Service Pack, query on the following word in the Microsoft Knowledge Base (without the spaces):

   S E R V P A C K

WORKAROUND

The MTACHECK utility will eliminate these erroneous files and allow the MTA to return to normal operation. Instructions for this utility are included in the Microsoft Exchange Server Administrator's Guide, chapter 17. For additional information about this utility, please see the following article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:

   ARTICLE-ID: Q148284
   TITLE     : XCON: When and How to use the MTACHECK utility