Re: [exim] retry configuration

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Author: Graeme Fowler
Date:  
To: exim-users
Subject: Re: [exim] retry configuration
On Mon, 2009-04-20 at 23:55 +0300, Catalin Constantin wrote:
> With Exim the only issue is retry. It does not retry to deliver the
> email soon enough.


So... change the retry rules. If you have the defaults, they are:

> begin retry
>
> # This single retry rule applies to all domains and all errors. It specifies
> # retries every 15 minutes for 2 hours, then increasing retry intervals,
> # starting at 1 hour and increasing each time by a factor of 1.5, up to 16
> # hours, then retries every 6 hours until 4 days have passed since the first
> # failed delivery.
>
> # WARNING: If you do not have any retry rules at all (this section of the
> # configuration is non-existent or empty), Exim will not do any retries of
> # messages that fail to get delivered at the first attempt. The effect will
> # be to treat temporary errors as permanent. Therefore, DO NOT remove this
> # retry rule unless you really don't want any retries.
>
> # Address or Domain    Error       Retries
> # -----------------    -----       -------

>
> *                      *           F,2h,15m; G,16h,1h,1.5; F,4d,6h


Run exim such that it runs the queue every 2 minutes and change the
retry rule to something which suits you for yahoo.*:

yahoo.com * F,6h,6m; G,24h,10m,1.4; F,7d,12h

In other words: for yahoo.com, retry every 6 minutes up to 6 hours;
after this retry at 10 minutes and then grow the interval by a factor of
1.5 up to 24 hours (giving 13 retries in the next 18 hours); then retry
every 6 hours after the first 24 hours up to a maximum of 7 days.

You can tune this. Perhaps, by default, Postfix does more (or less?)
aggressive retries. Under normal operation I see nothing playing silly
beggars with yahoo.* (or hosted domains such as btinternet) but every
once in a while they do something that causes swathes of the Internet to
get delayed.

As an aside, did you contact Yahoo at all about this?

Graeme