I had a similar experience and it was due to the load on the local server, which was also acting as the mail server. The mail daemon was configured to "back off" when the load average reached a predefined threshold. That prevented the UTL_SMTP calls from completing which got propagated to the PL/SQL package. Tony Aponte ________________________________ From: oracle-l-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:oracle-l-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of dba1 mcc Sent: Thursday, June 26, 2008 11:57 AM To: oracle-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxx Subject: UTL_SMTP send mail wield problem???? we have ORACLE 10.2.0.4 with Redhat AS 4.4 on DELL server. Recently we are test "UTL_SMTP" on ORACLE PL/SQL program and tried to send MAIL to customers. The problem is this send MAIL program always one time work and second time not work (loop). I don't think problem come from ORACLE bug or any ORACLE relate problem. If I copy database and put on anyother server, it work correctly. Does anyone have suggestion? ====== sample event happen === Connected to: Oracle Database 10g Enterprise Edition Release 10.2.0.3.0 - Production With the Partitioning, OLAP and Data Mining options SQL> @mailbody 31 . SQL> / Declare * ERROR at line 1: ORA-29278: SMTP transient error: 421 Service not available ORA-06512: at "SYS.UTL_SMTP", line 21 ORA-06512: at "SYS.UTL_SMTP", line 97 ORA-06512: at "SYS.UTL_SMTP", line 139 ORA-06512: at line 15 SQL> / PL/SQL procedure successfully completed. SQL> / Declare * ERROR at line 1: ORA-29278: SMTP transient error: 421 Service not available ORA-06512: at "SYS.UTL_SMTP", line 21 ORA-06512: at "SYS.UTL_SMTP", line 97 ORA-06512: at "SYS.UTL_SMTP", line 139 ORA-06512: at line 15