Re: [exim] Frozen Bounce messages to unknown users

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Author: Philip Hazel
Date:  
To: John Oxley
CC: exim-users
Subject: Re: [exim] Frozen Bounce messages to unknown users
On Tue, 4 Jul 2006, John Oxley wrote:

> Recently I've been getting a lot of bounce messages sitting in my queue
> that are intended for users that do not exist. These cannot be bounced
> because they do not have a sender address, and they sit frozen in the
> queue for 2 days before they are discarded. I have about 15000 of these
> messages at any one time.


Why not enable verify=recipient so that you don't accept these in the
first place?

> I am worried that exim is trying to deliver them every 30 minutes. This
> shouldn't happen if the message is frozen correct?


It will *look* at every message whenever the queue runs; if the message
is frozen, it should say "ah, frozen, leave it alone".

> Are there any dangers of changing ignore_bounce_errors_after to
> something like 12h and dropping timeout_frozen_after to 2d from 7d?


I have used 12h. There are even sites the set ignore_bounce_errors_after
to 0h; with 15000 messages you aren't going to look at them, are you? So
you might as well sling them asap.

-- 
Philip Hazel            University of Cambridge Computing Service
Get the Exim 4 book:    http://www.uit.co.uk/exim-book