On Mon, 8 Mar 1999, Tabor J. Wells wrote:
> Why do messages not get delivered down the same connection when I do
> something like:
>
> exim -v -R @aol.com
>
> but for other domains, I do this and I see the appropriate "waiting for
> passed connections to get used"?
I can think of a few possibilities why this might happen. Recall that
Exim does not keep separate queues for each domain, but operates in a
distributed fashion. Messages get into its "waiting for host x" hints
database only when a delivery has been tried, and has had a temporary
error. Here are some possibilities:
(1) The messages to aol.com got put in your queue, but no previous
delivery attempt occured before you did the -R. This might have been
because of your settings of queue_only_load, smtp_accept_queue, or any
other option that caused no immediate delivery attempt on arrival. If
this is the case, you can try using -qqR instead of -R.
(2) You have set batch_max on the smtp transport, and that limit was
reached. This would show as a sequence of n messages down one
connection, then another n down a new connection, etc.
(3) Exim tried to pass on the SMTP connection to another message, but
that message was in the process of being delivered to aol.com by some
other process (typically, a normal queue runner). This will break the
sequence, though the other delivery should pass its connection on to
other messages if there are any.
(4) The folk at aol.com changed the MX records so the host names have
changed - or a new host has been added. I don't know how likely this is.
(5) Exim is not performing as it should in this regard, for some reason.
Next time you have mail queued up for aol.com, try running
exim_dumpdb /var/spool/exim wait-remote_smtp
to see if those messages are listed among those waiting for the relevant
aol.com hosts.
--
Philip Hazel University of Cambridge Computing Service,
ph10@??? Cambridge, England. Phone: +44 1223 334714.
--
*** Exim information can be found at
http://www.exim.org/ ***
