Forum Discussion
[Server Buld 20303.1] IIS 6 Manager crashes trying to edit SMTP Virtual Server Properties
- We found that doing the following worked, and can now edit the settings in the II6 Manager without errors (and without crashing when applying settings) every time:
Stop SMTPSVC service [Display Name: Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP)]
Stop IISADMIN service [Display name: IIS Admin Service]
Edit "C:\Windows\System32\inetsrv\MetaBase.xml"
Find: <IIsSmtpServer Location ="/LM/SmtpSvc/1"
Add (Settings are alphabetical): RelayIpList=""
Save file
Start IISAdmin Service
Start SMTPSVC service
You can now open the Internet Information Services (IIS) 6.0 Manager (InetMgr6.exe) and work like normal. The setting above relates to the Access Tab > Relay Restrictions section, but doesn't set anything in it (i.e. "all except the below list" with a blank list).
After setting this value you can change it to what you need it to be. (i.e. the value doesn't need to be 'null' for the fix to work, just so long as the variable is present in the file).
The above has been tested on a few new installs of Windows Server 2022, and has worked for us every time. If you have done an upgrade there are some other things to consider (seems like the SMTP service is not installed after upgrade so will require a backup of the settings that can be applied post reinstalling the service. But that is discussed in other topics).
PS: Remember to set the SMTPSVC service to start "automatically". By default its set to "manual".
Source: https://serverfault.com/questions/1088555/server-2022-smtp-server-issue
Also, how do we relay mail with System.SMTP.Mail? 🙂
My use case is that I want to relay local mail from FSRM which uses unauthenticated SMTP. With Server 2019, I set up a relay on localhost, then relay to my account at SendMail.Org to send on to the real account. It works a treat. Can you suggest an alternative way to achieve these FSRM email reports?
Microsoft- KevinShaughnessyHmm. That link was good but posting it somehow made it invalid, apparently by stripping the last parenthesis off it. Try copy/pasting this into your address bar then add the "https://" prefix to it: docs.microsoft.com/en-us/previous-versions/windows/it-pro/windows-server-2012-R2-and-2012/hh831568(v=ws.11)
KevinShaughnessy Pause the service, then edit what you need, then start it. In addition to crashing when editing, my smtp server crashes any time I connect to it too.
buckeyeguy318 thank you! That worked!
Well, that's fine it was deprecated, so what's the purpose of letting the feature SMTP to be installed on Windows Server 2022, if you can't manage it anymore.
Was my fault not reading this before, now I'm rolling back to 2019.
- KevinShaughnessy
NunoTex Sorry for the troubles. The management bug came about separately / unrelated to the deprecation of the SMTP stack. It should have still worked so long as the SMTP stack shipped in Windows but apparently some updates to the management console caused a regression/bug here. Deprecation (when we no longer officially support something / use at your own risk) usually happens well in advance of removal (e.g. several years). In this case, due to the strategic shift at Microsoft to cloud services the backlog item to remove the SMTP stack from Windows was deprioritized much longer than originally expected.
