XCON: MTA DRAS Connection Terminates With 1294 and 9316 Events

• Microsoft Exchange Server, version 5.5

SYMPTOMS

The Microsoft Exchange Server 5.5 message transfer agent (MTA) may fail to maintain a connection over a DRAS connection. Events similar to the following may appear in the Application event log:

   Event: 1294
   Source: MTA
   An association with entity
   /O=MICROSOFT/OU=THEFORCE/CN=CONFIGURATION/CN=CONNECTIONS/CN=DAGOBAH TO
   PLEASUREDOME ended abnormally. [4 1 0 0 PLATFORM KERNEL 16 130] (10)

   Event: 9316
   Source: MTA
   An RPC communications error occurred. No data was sent over the RPC
   connection. Locality table (LTAB) index: 4. Windows NT error: 1783. The
   MTA will attempt to recover the RPC connection. [BASE IL PIPE RAS 24
   230] (12) 

CAUSE

The Windows NT error 1783 in Event 9316 equates to "Bad Stub Data." This problem occurs when the number of messages in the outbound DRAS connector's queue exceeds the DRAS connector's configured threshold. By default, the Threshold value is set to 50. When the queue exceeds this threshold, an additional association is generated. However, the sending MTA passes an invalid context handle to the receiving MTA, which terminates the connection because the handle is invalid.

STATUS

Microsoft has confirmed this to be a problem in Microsoft Exchange Server version 5.5. This problem has been corrected in the latest U.S. Service Pack for Microsoft Exchange Server version 5.5. 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

Keywords          : XCON 
Version           : winnt:5.5
Platform          : winnt 
Issue type        : kbbug