Your first step should be to check the status of the mail.box database. Open the database by selecting Database->Open from the File menu, then choose your Domino server. Keep in mind that the mail.box database is not listed, so you must type the filename "mail.box" in the filename prompt. Open the database, and you will most likely see a number of mail messages listed in the database.

If you do not see any messages, there are two possibilities -- either the mail router database has no messages in it, or you do not have the rights to see the documents it does have. Check the database ACL (Access Control List) and make sure that you have Manager rights to the database. If you only have Depositor rights (the default), you don't have permission to see the documents.

In order to get mail routing going again, you may have to perform several different levels of repairs, depending upon the corruption level of the database. The most severe level of corruption requires that the mail.box database be replaced. This is the last resort to problem resolution, due to the fact that you have a chance of losing any mail that is currently in the existing mail.box database.

Steps to resolve routing problems
Problem resolution should begin with steps to fix the corruption problem in the mail.box database. Lotus Domino includes several internal tools, which will resolve most corruption problems. Use the following procedures to solve those corruption problems.

Shut down the router and SMTP tasks
The mail.box database is always in use as long as the router and SMTP tasks are active on the Domino server. In order to execute the following steps, you must unload the router and SMTP tasks. If you are in a multi-server environment, other Domino servers may be placing mail into the server's mail.box database. If that is the case, you may need to shut down the Domino server.

Your first step is to shut down the router and SMTP tasks by using the following console commands:

Once the router and SMTP tasks shut down, it's possible to run repair tasks against the mail.box database.

Run fixup
The first level of repair to run against mail.box is the fixup task. This task is responsible for fixing corrupted documents and views. To run this command against the mail.box database, type the following command on the Domino server console (or from the R5 Administrator console).

Run the compact command
Once the fixup command has completed its task, you'll want to run the compact task against the database to fix any problems that fixup didn't repair. To run compact against the database, type the following command on the Domino server console:

The "-c" option rebuilds hidden views within the database.

Run updall
Once the compact command has completed its task, the next step involves running the updall task against the mail.box database. To do this, type the following command on the Domino server console: