What happens when you turn on internal debugging?

http://tinyurl.com/c5qqh
http://www.mail-archive.com/log4net-user%40logging.apache.org/msg02306.html

You'll probably get an error saying you don't have permission to create
an CDO object.

There is no error message in the log file. File is attached.

This is a good start. Now let's see your SmtpAppenderFATAL appender
node and maybe one or two of the logger nodes that reference it.

Here is the Config file.
Usman

I used nDumbster:

 http://ndumbster.sourceforge.net/

to setup a mock SMTP server on my system and I was able to see log
messages:

 <appender name="SmtpAppender" type="log4net.Appender.SmtpAppender">
  <to value="to@to.com" />
  <from value="from@from.com" />
  <subject value="SmtpAppender Subject" />
  <smtpHost value="127.0.0.1" />
  <bufferSize value="1" />
  <layout type="log4net.Layout.SimpleLayout" />
  <filter type="log4net.Filter.LevelRangeFilter">
   <levelMin value="FATAL"/>
   <levelMax value="FATAL"/>
  </filter>
 </appender>

This is what nDumbster processed:

 thread-index: AcXEM8in/PUSDjTMRYGRv0fJOIQJAQ==
 Thread-Topic: SmtpAppender Subject
 From: <from@from.com>
 To: <to@to.com>
 Subject: SmtpAppender Subject
 Date: Wed, 28 Sep 2005 09:51:53 -0400
 Message-ID: <013201c5c433$c8a7e630$640fa8c0@rockinron>
 MIME-Version: 1.0
 Content-Type: text/plain;
 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
 X-Mailer: Microsoft CDO for Exchange 2000
 Content-Class: urn:content-classes:message
 Importance: normal
 Priority: normal
 X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V6.00.2900.2180

 FATAL - Hello World

--- Usman Uppal <uuppal@salesforce.com> wrote:

> Here is the Config file.
> Usman

Ron, SMTP Appender works on my machine using our internal SMTP host but
when I deploy my code on a hosted server (outside of our environment)
that is using different SMTP host, it does not work.

Do we need to have Exchange CDO installed on the hosted server? Any
other requirements that I should check for?

Thanks for your help.

Usman

I don't think you mentioned the part about the application being hosted
on a 3rd party server. Have you verified that you can send mail on that
server?

 using System.Web.Mail;
 MailMessage mailMessage = new MailMessage();
 mailMessage.To = "to@to.com";
 mailMessage.From = "from@from.com";
 mailMessage.Subject = "Subject";
 mailMessage.Body = "Hello World";
 SmtpServer.Send(mailMessage);

If you can't send mail, I would extend SmtpAppender and override the
SendBuffer method to use something like OpenSMTP:

 http://sourceforge.net/projects/opensmtp-net/

The new implementation would be very similiar to the base one:

http://tinyurl.com/a55ec
http://cvs.apache.org/viewcvs.cgi/logging-log4net/src/Appender/SmtpAppender.cs?rev=1.9&view=markup

On a slightly unreleated note, here's a screen shot of log4net's
SmtpAppender viewed from NLogViewer using nDumbster as a mock
SmtpServer (thanks to Jarek for cleaning up my code):

 http://www.ronosaurus.com/log4net/nlogviewer_ndumbster_log4net.png

That should be helpful in determining what a good bufferSize property
of the SmtpAppender is so it doesn't queue up messages for days then
suddenly attempt to send a giant 200mb email.

Your had posted this earlier:

 <appender name="SmtpAppender" type="log4net.Appender.SmtpAppender">
  <to value="uuppal@salesforce.com" />
  <from value="gordon.chan@logicacmg.com" />
  <subject value="ERROR - test Account Process Logging Message" />
  <smtpHost value="192.168.1.3" />
  <bufferSize value="512" />
  <lossy value="false" />
  <filter type="log4net.Filter.LevelRangeFilter">
   <param name="LevelMin" value="INFO"/>
   <param name="LevelMax" value="ERROR"/>
  </filter>
  <layout type="log4net.Layout.PatternLayout">
   <conversionPattern value="[%date]    %message" />
  </layout>
 </appender>

You are aware that no emails will be sent until 512 messages have been
queued up?

Are you able to send mail using these more general settings?

 <appender name="SmtpAppender" type="log4net.Appender.SmtpAppender">
  <to value="uuppal@salesforce.com" />
  <from value="gordon.chan@logicacmg.com" />
  <subject value="ERROR - test Account Process Logging Message" />
  <smtpHost value="192.168.1.3" />
  <bufferSize value="1" />
  <layout type="log4net.Layout.SimpleLayout" />
 </appender>

Ron, Yes setting buffer to 1 works on the third party server. I am
getting one email per line of information logging.

Why buffer size of 512 works from my pc and not the 3rd party server?
What should be appropriate buffer size?
usman

I don't know why it would work with 1 but not with 512. At least we
know the SmtpAppender is working correctly. Is there a message body
size limit imposed by your server? Why not run more tests to get a
better idea of what the bufferSize fails on:

 1: works
 10: ???
 50: ???
 200: ???
 350: ???
 512: doesn't work

If the bufferSize fails to delivery 350 messages I would output 350
message to a text file then read those messages in and try manually
sending the mail:

 using System.Web.Mail;
 MailMessage mailMessage = new MailMessage();
 mailMessage.To = "to@to.com";
 mailMessage.From = "from@from.com";
 mailMessage.Subject = "Subject";
 using (StreamReader sr = new StreamReader("350_log_messages.txt"))
 {
  mailMessage.Body = sr.ReadToEnd();
 }
 SmtpServer.Send(mailMessage);

If that works and 512_log_messages.txt works I'm afraid I've run out of
ideas :(

Another non-related comment...It would be interesting if someone wrote
a SmtpAppender that would send the logging events as an attachment:

 <appender name="AttachmentSmtpAppender" type="...">
  <to value="..." />
  <from value="..." />
  <subject value="..." />
  <body value="See attached file(s) for logs" />
  <smtpHost value="..." />
  <bufferSize value="512" />
  <layout type="log4net.Layout.SimpleLayout" />
  <attachedFile value="DEBUG.txt">
   <filter type="log4net.Filter.LevelMatchFilter">
    <levelToMatch value="DEBUG" />
   </filter>
  </attachedFile>
  <attachedFile value="INFO.txt">
   <filter type="log4net.Filter.LevelMatchFilter">
    <levelToMatch value="INFO" />
   </filter>
  </attachedFile>
 </appender>

That would send a single message with a user supplied body that would
contain two attachments: DEBUG.txt containing only DEBUG messages and
INFO.txt containing only INFO messages.

I've noticed that one one of our servers, an appender might not work until we change the config file.

I've noticed this on the smtp appender, and it doesn't fail consistenly one one buffer size, it stops working sometimes, and any change to the config file, including to the bufferSize seems to reset something.

Michael

Did you configure log4net with ConfigureAndWatch or just Configure?

The built-in System.Web.Mail.SmtpServer.Send method has a void return
type. Unless I'm mistaken, it does not record its interactions with the
mail server. OpenSMTP probably supports this. I know the AspNetEmail
email component does:

 http://www.aspnetemail.com/

If you're paranoid about mail not being sent, you should probably
invest in a component that has logging:

 EmailMessage msg = new EmailMessage("Mail1.MyCompany.com");
 msg.FromAddress = "me@MyCompany.com";
 msg.AddTo("you@YourCompany.com", "Billy Bob");
 msg.Subject = "Daily Newsletter";
 msg.Body = "Here is our daily newsletter.....";
 msg.Logging = true;
 if (msg.Send() == false)
 {
   LogLog.Error(String.Format("Unable to send mail. Log: {0}",
    msg.GetLog()), msg.LastException());
 }