[exim] Messages are never retried

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Author: Adam Ellsworth
Date:  
To: exim-users
Subject: [exim] Messages are never retried

Hello, I'm stumped on this one. I've been looking into it for a few weeks
but either I've lost my Googlability or I'm on the wrong track. You can't
search what you don't know, I guess.

Essentially, normal mail delivery seems fine. If an attempt fails (usually
due to simple greylisting) delivery is deferred. BUT, it never tries
again. I can manually force a delivery attempt, and the message goes
through fine. But if I don't, it will sit forever. Server being only a
couple months old, I cannot confirm if this has ever worked correctly... I
only discovered the problem a few weeks ago, and some messages were over
60 days old __but not Frozen__.

Example: Someone today sent out an email almost two hours ago. I would
expect retries every 15 minutes. However, I see the initial attempt in the
log, but nothing after that:

===== exigrep 1JhU2N-0002ly /var/log/exim_mainlog =====

+++ 1JhU2N-0002ly-Fj has not completed +++
2008-04-03 13:19:47 1JhU2N-0002ly-Fj <= jzeigler@??? H=localhost
[127.0.0.1] P=esmtp S=7071 id=!~!UEN...AA@???
2008-04-03 13:19:47 1JhU2N-0002ly-Fj mailscanner.example2.com
[129.66.xx.xx] Connection refused
2008-04-03 13:19:47 1JhU2N-0002ly-Fj == klagess@??? R=lookuphost
T=remote_smtp defer (111): Connection refused

[root]# date
Thu Apr 3 15:12:08 CDT 2008
===========================================

Checking the retry database shows the time for retry has clearly come:

===== exim_dumpdb /var/spool/exim retry =====
(...)
T:mailscanner.example2.com:129.66.xx.xx 111 77 Connection refused
03-Apr-2008 13:19:47 03-Apr-2008 13:19:47 03-Apr-2008 13:34:47
(...)
====================================

And finally:

===== exim.conf retry section =====

begin retry
*       *       F,2h,15m; G,16h,1h,1.5; F,3d,8h


===========================


...ideas? I got nothing. What triggers these retry deliveries? Is there
another process/daemon that has perhaps failed? Have I inadvertantly
turned something off? Thanks greatly for any help!

-Adam