Just come across an oddity in how Exim 3.03 handles a 452 response (temporary
failure, "out of local storage") to a RCPT TO. We had a message going to a
machine that had lots of MX hosts defined, and the target user has a full
mailbox. On each delivery attempt, Exim works down all the MX hosts, getting
the same 452 response from each.
1999-11-11 16:20:47 SMTP error from remote mailer after RCPT TO:
<nicole_lancaster@???>: host mx0.gmx.net [194.221.183.81]: 452
nicole_lancaster>... The users mailbox is full
1999-11-11 16:20:48 SMTP error from remote mailer after RCPT TO:
<nicole_lancaster@???>: host mx0.gmx.net [194.221.183.88]: 452
<nicole_lancaster>... The users mailbox is full
1999-11-11 16:20:48 SMTP error from remote mailer after RCPT TO:
<nicole_lancaster@???>: host mx0.gmx.net [194.221.183.82]: 452
<nicole_lancaster>... The users mailbox is full
1999-11-11 16:20:54 SMTP error from remote mailer after RCPT TO:
<nicole_lancaster@???>: host mx0.gmx.net [194.221.183.85]: 452
<nicole_lancaster>... The users mailbox is full
Looking in Marshall Rose's SMTP book, the specified action for a 452 in
response to a RCPT TO is "retry later"; only if you get a 452 in response to a
MAIL FROM is it "try next server".
Am I being dense in thinking Exim should back off after the first failure here?
I don't have the raw RFCs to check against....
Alan Phillips
Lancaster Uni
