Hello,
We had a problem yesterday which took some time to sort out. Running exim
1.92, we had mail building up for the server 'csuf11.plymouth.ac.uk'. Exim
reported 'Retry time not reached for any host'. Now as far as we could tell
all was well with exim and the server (csuf11). Trying to force the messages
to be delivered, via eximon, and 'exim -Rf', produced the same message. We
could see mail going through the system to 'csuf11.csd.plym.ac.uk' - an
alternative DNS address for the server. We removed the retry database
completely, but got the same messages. So we were a little stumped (more like
confused), since we couldn't see where the retry time came in to it.
However. checking the DNS we saw that 'csuf11.plymouth.ac.uk' is a CNAME for
'csuf11.computing-service.plymouth.ac.uk' - no problem with that. We also saw
that 'csuf11.computing-service.plymouth.ac.uk' had 2 MX records associated
with it:
8 csuf11.csd.plymouth.ac.uk
13 plymouth.ac.uk
The latter entry is the mailhub itself and is correct. The first entry however
is invalid - non-existant. So it seems that exim located the MX records, tried
to send to the first entry, but couldn't (it not being valid), and, of
course, couldn't use the second entry since the message was already on the
mailhub.
We are getting the DNS entry changed. We forced the mail through by adding a
recipient with the same userid and correct address, and then removed the
'deferred' messages that were left. The point is though - shouldn't exim have
reported some other message rather than the one about retry times? It was
confusing since we spent time checking out the retry time database, before
looking further at the actual address and the DNS entries. Should we not have
been able to 'force' the messages through and exim then show an error
relating to the DNS entry - unknown domain, that sort of thing?
John.
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John Horne E-mail: J.Horne@???
Computing Service Phone : +44 (0) 1752 - 233911
University of Plymouth, UK Fax : +44 (0) 1752 - 233919
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