[Exim] When should exim send mails back?

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Author: Sven Callender
Date:  
To: exim-users
Subject: [Exim] When should exim send mails back?
Hi,

we have got exim running on a few Machines here and now we have got the
problem that some Mails hang in the queue for ever they don't get send
back nor is it possible to send them on.

Most of these messages are ones wich aren't deliverable because the
host isn't resolvable (these remove@??? hosts) or exim
can't connect because the connection is refused.

We have got this retry configuration:

--- 
######################################################################
# RETRY CONFIGURATION                                                #
######################################################################
#This single retry rule applies to all domains and all errors. It
#specifies
#retries every 15 minutes for 2 hours, then increasing retry intervals, 
#starting at 1 hour and increasing each time by a factor of 1.5, up to 16 
#hours, then retries every 8 hours until 4 days have passed since the first
# failed delivery. 
# Domain Error Retries 
# ------ ----- ------- 
# * * F,2h,15m; G,16h,1h,1.5; F,4d,8h 


*.uni-frankfurt.de * F,1h,5m; F,5h,20m;F,1d,4h 
*.t-online.de      * F,1h,5m; F,10h,60m; F,2d,12h 
*.gmx.de           * F,2h,15m; F,16h,1,5h; F,1d,8h 
*.de               * F,2h,15m; F,16h,1h; F,1d,8h


*                  * F,2h,15m; G,16h,1h,1.5; F,1d,8h


end

----

What happens after these times?
As far as I understand nothing until the next queue run takes it and
notices that it has timed out and sends it back, right?

The problem that we have is that some messages sit here for days and
get the "remote_smtp transport deferred: retry time not reached for any
host" message in their logs but they don't get send back.
We have to try a manual delivery that exim realises that they aren't
deliverable and sends them back to their origin.

What can be done better?
Are there flaws in the retry configuration?
How can we automate that?

tia,
cu,
sven