hello,
2007/9/27, Jethro R Binks <jethro.binks@???>:
> From time to time I get asked some variant of "how many emails do the
> University systems reject?" (meaning at the MXs).
For the actual number of delivered messages I find isoqlog helpful.
But unfortunately isoqlog will not show you how many connections there
were.
HTH
Zbigniew Szalbot
>
> My problem is that I never really know how to answer that accurately and
> meaningfully. I run eximstats over the consolidated logs from the MXs,
> which gives me a report. I get a count of connections made, and some of
> those will get through and cause emails to be delivered, and others will
> be rejected, at HELO time or RCPT time or DATA time as seems appropriate
> for efficiency or best information purposes (The report gives a breakdown
> of the reasons for rejections through the use of custom patterns looking
> for strings set with log_message per acl clause). Some connections may
> just be shed off through the use of imposed SMTP delays and I never get
> any more information than the remote IP.
>
> The problem is, of course, that a connection could deliver one or more
> email messages, and one email message may be addressed to one or more
> recipients. This makes a direct comparison of connections vs deliveries
> difficult.
>
> It's also hard to say whether a message for two recipients is one or two
> emails. The MTA transports it as one message, but on a traditional (Unix)
> email system a copy may get delivered to each recipient, so does it then
> become two messages? On the other hand, if delivery is to a modern
> 'database' message store, like Exchange, in some cases at least, I think I
> am right in saying there is just one 'copy' of the message in the
> database, and each user just receives a pointer to it from their inbox.
> In either case, I imagine each user would count the copy of the message in
> their own inbox as separate from the one in another recipients inbox -
> each 'copy' is viewed as a unique message.
>
> For the purposes of the report request, I usually end up giving the
> relevant numbers with units, and include a rider saying that direct
> comparisons of the numbers could be misleading with a brief explanation.
>
> I just wondered if anyone had any neat ways of summarising this, or
> resolving the issue of mismatched units (# connections vs # messages vs #
> recipients). Or just calculate a converstion factor for '# messages
> delivered from a connection' and multiply up, and not trouble whoever is
> asking with the detail. Or perhaps I'm missing something obvious.
>
> Jethro.
>
> . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
> Jethro R Binks
> Computing Officer, IT Services
> University Of Strathclyde, Glasgow, UK
>
> --
> ## List details at http://lists.exim.org/mailman/listinfo/exim-users
> ## Exim details at http://www.exim.org/
> ## Please use the Wiki with this list - http://wiki.exim.org/
>
