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Clean shutdown suggestions
Problem reported by Cris Mead - 12/15/2025 at 9:03 AM
Submitted
Hello everyone,

we've been facing issues for a long time with what I expect is not a clean shut down, every time we reboot the server for SM updates or windows updates, we hold our breath to see if the domains and user come back...

we have Windows Server, and using iSCSI on a QNAP NAS...

Does anyone have suggestions on how to do a clean boot?
D
Douglas Foster Replied
12/15/2025 at 11:04 AM
Sounds like you are on an older build.

The clean shutdown solution is to manually stop the SmarterMail service, then watch in Task Manager until the MailService.exe process actually goes away.   Once this happens, you can manually reboot.   I believe this has been addressed on newer builds, as I have not been burned in awhile.

I have also seen past problems with specific user accounts not loading at startup.   When I would search the user account list, the affected accounts would have a red alarm icon.   Log file (forget which one) would confirm a problem.   I think the suspected cause was a locked file, but never proven.    Stopping and restarting the SmarterMail service always caused the problem accounts to appear.    Have not seen this in awhile either.

I am on Build 9287 at the moment. 
What version of SM ?
Is it all of the data Domains and user accounts are on the NAS and the connection is not re-established on restart ?
www.HawaiianHope.org - Providing technology services to non profit organizations, low income families, homeless shelters, clean and sober houses and prisoner reentry programs. Since 2015, We have refurbished over 11,000 Computers !
Cris Mead Replied
12/15/2025 at 6:31 PM
sorry i typed this in before i left work, but must have missed sending it

Build 9434 (Oct 30, 2025)

@Curtis all data is on NAS and though we have had connection not established, it happens when it also is established on restart (we use 'delayed start' to make sure the NAS is connected)

@Douglas - yea we are leaning to wards a locked file, but we are always forced to pull data from the archive to get domains/users back
D
Douglas Foster Replied
12/15/2025 at 7:42 PM
About the NAS...

My configuration uses iscsi connections, which depend on network.   So I have to configure service for delayed start so that the disks exist when the service is started.  Could that apply in your setup?
What is the network switch you are using and do you have spanning tree turned on ? How long does it take before your server see the NAS drive ?  On a lot of the switches we have tried (especially cisco), even if the computer and NAS is on, if the server or NAS restarts, it could take up to 40 seconds before the switch gives it an OK and passes an IP Address to it. This is because Spanning Tree is verifying there is no loop created. We disable Spanning Tree and also use switches that have total boot time of under 30 seconds in case everything powers off and restarts. I have had problems with various apps that if the NAS is not visible on the 
network, we have to restart the app after the NAS becomes visible.
www.HawaiianHope.org - Providing technology services to non profit organizations, low income families, homeless shelters, clean and sober houses and prisoner reentry programs. Since 2015, We have refurbished over 11,000 Computers !
J
Jay Dubb Replied
12/16/2025 at 7:50 AM
Until we lost a large client to MS 365, our Smartermail server consumed 80+ GB of RAM in normal operation.  For Windows updates (or any reboot for that matter) we'd have to manually stop the Smartermail service and wait for the mailservice.exe process to unwind and write to disk, which could often take 1-2 minutes on a server with an extremely fast disk subsystem (stripe set across 8 x 24Gbps SAS enterprise SSDs).  If we didn't wait until that process fully unloaded, we would see all kinds of domain and mailbox corruption upon restart.
 
Cris Mead Replied
12/16/2025 at 9:00 AM
We only restart the server, but next NAS firmware update, I'm going to watch this like  hawk.

QNAP switch, buried in cable drops currently (I'll find the model when I un-strangle myself)

  • RAM for us is ~ 15-17GB used of 128GB
  • 2.5 / 5TB space (PCIex4 gen3 NVMe), 10 drive, RAID 6
We definitely wait for the service to be unloaded +2 min 
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