On Fri, 29 Apr 2005, Mark Rigby-Jones wrote:
> > > * * senders=: G,4h,5m,2
<snip>
> Could, then, a message with an empty sender failing after 4 hours cause the
> host to get marked as 'past final cutoff' in the hints db even though other
> messages have a final cutoff time of four days?
Aarrgghh!! Yes, of course. My goodness, I didn't think through the
implications of adding the "senders" facility.
For host errors, Exim does *host-based* retries, not message-based
retries. So yes, if the problem is with the host, it is going to
misbehave in exactly the way you describe.
The addition of the "senders" feature was done with thought of errors
given to MAIL FROM:<> in mind, to get rid of bounces to sites that are
rejecting null senders quickly. I did not think of what might happen for
other errors.
I will update the documentation in due course to point out this issue,
and suggest that "senders" is used only in conjuction with a test for
specific errors that are not host based. At present, there is the
ability to check for RCPT TO errors, but not for MAIL FROM.
What a mess. Sorry.
--
Philip Hazel University of Cambridge Computing Service,
ph10@??? Cambridge, England. Phone: +44 1223 334714.
Get the Exim 4 book: http://www.uit.co.uk/exim-book
