--On 6 December 2006 10:38:08 +0000 Chris Lightfoot <chris@???>
wrote:
> On Wed, Dec 06, 2006 at 10:26:35AM +0000, Philip Hazel wrote:
> [...]
>> In our case, if our server sends a 550 for an overquota error, we want
>
> If you're going to start announcing temporary errors as
> permanent, it's hardly a surprise that people are going to
> start treating announced permanent errors as temporary!
> There isn't much machine-readable information in the SMTP
> error codes, and it hardly seems wise to reduce the amount
> further by using them inappropriately.
>
Well, heck maybe "local user unknown" is a temporary error. Here, we often
reopen accounts when ex-students return to take another course of study, or
get employment here, or when employees return as students.
The point of "550" is to say "we don't want you to retry". The point of
saying "overquota" is to describe the problem accurately, so that the
sender can contact the recipient out of band and get the problem fixed,
then resend the email.
What Philip seems to be describing is that their local policy (and this is
a local policy matter, not an RFC matter) is to defer messages for a few
days when the user is over-quota, but to deny after a few days if the user
has failed to fix the quota problem.
--
Ian Eiloart
IT Services, University of Sussex
