Re: [exim] SMTP temporary refusal, caveats?

On Mon, 5 Feb 2007, Jethro R Binks wrote:

| smtp_load_reserve = 40
|
| The servers were getting bogged down well before reaching this load
| average however, so I lately changed it:
|
| smtp_load_reserve = 10
|
| This results in us temporarily refusing to accept connections when the
| load is above 10 (which happens when things get busier).

Hi,

Since no-one else replied...

Perhaps I'm out of touch, but I'd have thought if you're regularly getting
load av. in the "tens", then it may be time for some new(er) boxes.


| Here's the crunch: I have a question relating to all this; should I take
| similar precautions as I would if implementing greylisting, in particular,
| use of the puremagic whitelist, to avoid penalising legitimate MTAs that
| don't behave properly?

[...]

| Any comments welcome, positive or negative. I feel this change was too
| easy, and something might bite.

If you're defering lots of connections, I'd have thought the delaying of
much normal mail from proper MTAs that *do* retry would be more noticeable
to users than the rare loss of something that doesn't retry.