Emails that are destined to the quarantine are held up in the Symantec Messaging Gateway (SMG) delivery queue with the return code 554 5.4.7 stating that the messages exceeded the max time.

These messages accumulate in the delivery queue and cannot be delivered to the Spam Quarantine.

Attempted Delivery to: X.X.X.X Error: 554 5.4.7 [internal] exceeded max time without delivery

BrightmailLog.log in at debug log level shows:

Jan 11 2011 12:39:56 [SmtpConsumer_0011_004] ERROR - Cannot create a spam message in the database.
com.brightmail.common.BrightmailException: Cannot create a spam message in the database.
at com.brightmail.bl.quarantine.QuarantineManager.create(QuarantineManager.java:281)
at com.brightmail.bl.quarantine.SpamMessageHandler.endBody(SpamMessageHandler.java:282)
at com.brightmail.service.smtp.impl.SmtpConsumer.run(SmtpConsumer.java:206)

Caused by:

java.sql.SQLException: Incorrect key file for table './brightmail/spam_message.MYI'; try to repair it

Corruption of one or more database tables in the SMG Control Center database.

The Control Center database is cleaned and repaired on a scheduled basis but may require a more direct and forced repair.

See How to check and repair the database in Messaging Gateway for details on repairing the Control Center database.