On Wed, 4 Aug 1999, Martin Stewart wrote:
> Using Exim 2.11 as I understand it when an MTA has gone down
> exim will use the retry rules to continue to deliver mail until the
> retry rules expire. At this point exim will give up on any mail for that
> MTA and stop accepting incoming mail for that customer.
>
> How does Exim know that the remote MTA has come back up. I
> guess that a successful delivery will flag the MTA as available
> again. However if the exim system it secondary MX for the MTA,
> once the MTA comes back up no further mail will arrive. Does the
> "flag" that says an MTA is unavailable expire should no
> unsuccessful delivery attempts be made.
The MX secondary administrator should have been told about the
down-time and ideally should ensure that the mail doesn't expire.
If I thought I had got close to the expiry time I would alert
my secondary's sysadmin when my system came back up, and possibly
send an SMTP ETRN request if the secondary supports it.
Dr. Andrew C. Aitchison Computer Officer, DPMMS, Cambridge
A.C.Aitchison@??? http://www.dpmms.cam.ac.uk/~werdna
