Hi,
The ISP I work for uses Exim 3.34 as a dial up SMTP server for about 1,500
domains.
The main spool file is /mail/batchsmtpq/input/ , we have a queue-splitter
perl script that periodically goes through that queue and moves the mails of
to seperate folders depending on the domain that they are being sent to ...
so a mail being sent to user@??? is moved off to
/mail/batchsmtpq/domain-queue/rentokil.ie/input/. We then have another
script that goes down through all the domains in the domain-queue directory
and periodically does a queue run on each domain whether the domains mail
server is on-line or not (this is done to try and limit the amount of mail
that is kept on the server as we tend to gather a lot of spam).
The queue run is issued via the following command
"/usr/local/exim/bin/exim -C
/usr/local/exim/configure -DSPOOL=/mail/batchsmtpq/domain-queue/$domain -q".
I have noticed that alot of mail being sent to customers are getting bounced
back to the send after only queueing on the server for between 10 and 20
hours ... the headers of the bounces look like the one below.
This message was created automatically by mail delivery software (Exim).
A message that you sent could not be delivered to one or more of its
recipients. This is a permanent error. The following address(es) failed:
tropicalplants@???
retry time not reached for any host after a long failure period
Our retry configuration is the default one, we have not altered it at all,
the only thing we have added in is :
auto_thaw = 17h
ignore_errmsg_errors_after = 48h
timeout_frozen_after = 5d
I was wondering - would the fact that the queue-runner program has attempted
several queue runs which have failed due to the fact that the customers
server was not on-line cause the mails to bounce back early ? Can anyone
else think of any other reason why the mails would be bouncing back earlier
than intended ?
Any and all suggestions are greatly appreciated, I have had a look around on
the archived postings and can't really find an answer ... Any good advice
will be repayed in Guiness if you ever come over to Ireland :-)
Regards,
Richard.
---------------------------
Richard Archbold
Systems Operations
Eircom Net
