[exim] Messages bouncing too soon

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Author: Mark Rigby-Jones
Date:  
To: exim-users
Subject: [exim] Messages bouncing too soon
Hi all,

I'm getting a strange issue where exim seems to be bouncing messages much
sooner then the final retry rule. The scenario in question is with messages
coming into a server which are then sent on to the customer's SMTP server.

Earlier in the week one customer had to take their server down and, as
expected, mail queued up here with lots of "retry time not reached for any
host" messages in the log. However, after a day or so, messages started to
bounce with the message "all hosts have been failing for a long time and
were last tried after this message arrived".

The retry rule for the messages (as checked with exim -brt) is as follows,
giving a final retry timeout of two weeks.
cdb*@;/etc/mail/retry/server.cdb * F,2h,15m; F,16h,1h; F,2w,8h;

The entry for the customer's server in the retry.db file did correctly show
the start time of the failure as being a couple of days ago.

I'm at a loss to explain why these messages are being bounced. Any hints as
to what else to look at would be greatly appreciated.

mrj
-- 
       Mark Rigby-Jones, Operations Manager @ Community Internet plc
       Windsor House, 12 High Street, Kidlington, Oxford OX5 2PJ, UK
    Tel: +44-1865-856000 (Direct: +44-1865-856009) Fax: +44-1865-856001
         mrj@??? <*> http://www.community.net.uk/~mrj