[Exim] frozen delivery messages

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Author: Paul
Date:  
To: exim-users
Subject: [Exim] frozen delivery messages
Hi All,

I am doing some investigation in the way we handle our mailqueue and found
the following to be quite bizzare, below is what I've found. If you guys
could have a look that would be great.

From mailq:
 7d  2.0K 1Agj9X-0000ge-00 <> *** frozen ***
          sueannebabel939_4@???


I then grep for the msg id in our logs (we keep upto 20 days of logs)
root@mail01:/var/log/exim# grep "1Agj9X-0000ge-00"
/var/log/exim/exim_mainlog.*

and we get...
/var/log/exim/exim_mainlog.07:2004-01-14 22:25:40 1Agj9X-0000ge-00 <= <>
R=1Agj9U-0000ca-00 U=mail P=local S=2028
/var/log/exim/exim_mainlog.07:2004-01-14 22:25:58 1Agj9X-0000ge-00 **
sueannebabel939_4@??? R=lookuphost T=remote_smtp: SMTP
error from remote mailer after RCPT
TO:<sueannebabel939_4@???>: host
hellokitty-com.mr.outblaze.com [205.158.62.137]: 550
<sueannebabel939_4@???>: No thank you rejected: Account
Unavailable: Possible Forgery
/var/log/exim/exim_mainlog.07:2004-01-14 22:25:58 1Agj9X-0000ge-00 Frozen
(delivery error message)

Which shows we tried delivery, it failed we got 550 permenant error. Exim
marks it was frozen. However we still keep the email rather than deleting
it.

I then retry delivery...
root@mail01:/var/log/exim# /usr/sbin/sendmail -M 1Agj9X-0000ge-00

2004-01-21 13:39:36 1Agj9X-0000ge-00 **
sueannebabel939_4@??? R=lookuphost T=remote_smtp: SMTP
error from remote mailer after RCPT
TO:<sueannebabel939_4@???>: host
hellokitty-com.mr.outblaze.com [205.158.62.137]: 550
<sueannebabel939_4@???>: No thank you rejected: Account
Unavailable: Possible Forgery
2004-01-21 13:39:36 1Agj9X-0000ge-00
sueannebabel939_4@???: error ignored
2004-01-21 13:39:37 1Agj9X-0000ge-00 Completed

I then confirm that the email has been remvoed by doing a manual attempt
again...
2004-01-21 13:52:15 1Agj9X-0000ge-00 Spool file 1Agj9X-0000ge-00-D not found

And the email gets deleted. Why was it sitting in the queue however when I
attempt delivey it gets removed as the error is ignored? Why didn't it
remove it (the bounce email) in the first place when it first encounted the
550 instead of just becoming frozen and sitting there? 550 is a permenant
error as far as I knew, so why would exim hold onto the email and keep
trying?

Any help would be great as I can see our mailqueue is chock full of these
frozen emails to people that don't exist or mailer site's that refuse the
email all the time.

Regards,

Paul Rivoli
paul@???
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