This evening I received a phone call from a client:

Client: We are not receiving any emails from your site since lunchtime.

Me: Ok, no problem. I can look into that, quick question though. Have you been receiving any emails at all?

Client: Oh yes. Tons.

So off I pop to investigate. The Java application which generates these mails has nothing in the logs which look like errors. So I peer at our central outbound mail relay. Sure enough there are a bunch of mails in the retry queue waiting to be delivered to this client. Next up I look at the log, yep the mail server is complaining, first about connection refused then about no MX records. A quick dig for the MX records and sure enough there is nothing listed. Bravo!

So I ring back the client:

Me: I think its your problem, are you SURE you are receiving any other email.

Client: No, we havn’t received anything from anybody since mail from your site stopped around lunch time.

/me looks STUNNED

It is at times like this I would like to be able to send this image to said client…

Can’t cure stoopid