Re: [exim] Retry on 550 errors

On Wed, Dec 06, 2006 at 01:26:59PM +0000, Martin A. Brooks wrote:
> On Wed, 2006-12-06 at 13:22 +0000, Chris Lightfoot wrote:
>
> > In the real world one frequently encounters sites which
> > issue permanent failures for over-quota conditions *even
> > though* retries shortly afterwards would succeed.
>
> Tough luck. If the recieving MTA issues a 5xx then you bounce the
> message back to the sender and it's the sender's job to decide whether
> to resend or not and _not_ some intermediate MTA that thinks it knows
> the destination site better than the administrators do.

I fail to see the advantage to the sender or the recipient
of your scheme. All it does is create work for them to no
end, work that can conveniently be done automatically by
the computer for them; and potentially make the transport
of their mail less reliable. The computer is supposed to
be a labour-saving device!

> It's akin to me sending a double glazing salesman round to your house
> under the instructions that, if you refuse to purchase double glazing
> now, then he should assume that you _might_ do so in a couple of hours
> time, so he should call back then _regardless_ of _your_ opinion on the
> matter.

This is an idiotic analogy.

In the case I'm describing the sender wants to send the
mail and the receiver wants to receive it. An intermediary
prevents the message from arriving for some independent
reason (over quota). An over quota condition does not
change either party's interest in transmission of the
message (presumably the recipient does not wish to be over
quota). The an analogy to unwanted real-world spam is
completely spurious.

--
``I can't find the [Latin] translation for `responsibility',
which might explain a lot of Roman history....'' (Gareth Wilson)