Symptom : Users are not receiving emails to their blackberry handheld. After a reboot of the whole server including the OS, everything works as normal. After several hours have passed or sometimes days, users complained that they stopped receiving emails to their handheld again.
Rebooting the server every time a users complains was not the best solution and this has puzzled us for some time because all systems were working OK. Domino was running without any problem and test messages to user’s handheld from the Blackberry manager were successful. So we turned to blackberry support and they helped us right away. After sending Domino log as well as BES log, the support person came back in an email stating that this is a known issue (SDR201970) and a fix has already been posted in Maintenance Release 1.
The CPU spikes at about 99% when BES receives an email that contains rich text for certain mime types. If you have to wait for after hours or weekend to apply the MR, there is an option to disable “Rich Content” and “Inline Images” temporarily so to prevent the BES server from crashing. I believe this can be found in the BlackBerry Manager, under Server Properties, in the Messaging options.
Below is a sample of the log entry for Blackberry Enterprise Server :
[20148] (04/17 10:59:06.468):{0x1568} Thread: *** No Response *** Thread Id=0x1634, Handle=0x598, WaitCount=1, Last Activity: Received NEW MAIL for user John Doe/YOUR-DOMAIN
[20148] (04/17 11:09:08.562):{0x1568} Thread: *** No Response *** Thread Id=0x1634, Handle=0x598, WaitCount=2, Last Activity: Received NEW MAIL for user John Doe/YOUR-DOMAIN
[20148] (04/17 11:19:09.109):{0x1568} Thread: *** No Response *** Thread Id=0x1634, Handle=0x598, WaitCount=3, Last Activity: Received NEW MAIL for user John Doe/YOUR-DOMAIN
[20148] (04/17 11:29:09.390):{0x1568} Thread: *** No Response *** Thread Id=0x1634, Handle=0x598, WaitCount=4, Last Activity: Received NEW MAIL for user John Doe/YOUR-DOMAIN
[20148] (04/17 11:39:09.687):{0x1568} Thread: *** No Response *** Thread Id=0x1634, Handle=0x598, WaitCount=5, Last Activity: Received NEW MAIL for user John Doe/YOUR-DOMAIN
[20148] (04/17 11:49:09.968):{0x1568} Thread: *** No Response *** Thread Id=0x1624, Handle=0x55C, WaitCount=1, Last Activity: Received NEW MAIL for user John Doe/YOUR-DOMAIN
[20148] (04/17 11:49:09.968):{0x1568} Thread: *** No Response *** Thread Id=0x1634, Handle=0x598, WaitCount=6, Last Activity: Received NEW MAIL for user John Doe/YOUR-DOMAIN
YOUR_SERVER_MAGT_01_20090417_0001.txt(3855): [20149] (04/17 10:59:06.343):{0x1568} Thread 1634, utilization=99.7786%, failed health check 1 times
YOUR_SERVER_MAGT_01_20090417_0001.txt(4204): [20149] (04/17 11:09:08.562):{0x1568} Thread 1634, utilization=99.7866%, failed health check 2 times
YOUR_SERVER_MAGT_01_20090417_0001.txt(4339): [20149] (04/17 11:19:09.109):{0x1568} Thread 1634, utilization=99.5200%, failed health check 3 times
YOUR_SERVER_MAGT_01_20090417_0001.txt(4810): [20149] (04/17 11:29:09.390):{0x1568} Thread 1634, utilization=99.4300%, failed health check 4 times
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This is exactly why I’ve found that it’s best to keep up-to-date on RIM’s maintenance releases. This particular problem is related to the BES’s new rich text/HTML email capabilities.
If you’re not ready to patch your system to MR3 (the latest version), a workaround (especially if you do not have any devices w/ 4.5 or newer firmware) is to disable rich text / HTML email delivery to devices. RIM’s KB15931 has more info.