Restarting the mail services

Products

CA Service Management - Service Desk Manager CA Service Desk Manager

Issue/Introduction

In Service Desk, there are several processes involved when it comes to mail handling. Running pdm_status or slstat, the processes are:

Mail Daemon (pdm_mail_nxd): This is the process used for outgoing mail notifications. The process connects to its assigned mail server via SMTP to transmit a mail notification.
Mail Eater (pdm_maileater_nxd): This process handles incoming mail. The process connects to its assigned mail server through IMAP4, POP3, or GRAPH, to read through its assigned mailbox and process the received mails

This article describes how to restart the given service without having to restart the entire SDM Service.

Note: The above two processes are separate functionalities. Issues with one process does not necessarily mean the other process is affected.

Environment

Release: 17.x

Resolution

On the given SDM Server, run the following command:
```
pdm_status | findstr mail
```

Depending on the server, you will see a list of results pertaining to the maileater and mail daemon processes:

Mail Daemon     (pdm_mail_nxd) Running       [SDM SERVER]   8300  Mon Jun  8 13:30:24  0
Mail Eater (pdm_maileater_nxd) Running       [SDM SERVER]   8804  Mon Jun  8 13:30:36  0

Identify the process ID (PID) value of interest. In the above, the Mail Daemon PID is 8300 and the maileater PID is 8804
Go into Windows Task Manager and under Details tab, list the values by PID order. Locate the PID of interest.
Note: Both of the above processes rely on the java.exe executable.
End the given PID entry in Task Manager (right click the java.exe entry and choose to End Process)
Run the above pdm_status command again, and continue to run every few seconds or so until a new PID is generated and the listing shows as "Running".

Additional Information

In an Advance Availability environment:

The pdm_mail_nxd process is found on both the BG and App servers. Depending on the nature of the mail notification, if the mail notification was sent through end user action (create new case, manual notify, status change, closure), the pdm_mail_nxd process on the App server where the end user was logged into will be leveraged. Other notifications, such as event notifications, are generally processed through the BG Server's instance of the pdm_mail_nxd process.

The pdm_maileater_nxd process is found on the BG Server only.

In a Conventional environment:

The pdm_mail_nxd and pdm_maileater_nxd process is found on the Primary server.