Re: [exim] Why does exim keep retrying?

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Author: Phil Pennock
Date:  
To: Robin Powell (from phone)
CC: exim-users
Subject: Re: [exim] Why does exim keep retrying?
On 2013-08-30 at 19:17 -0700, Robin Powell (from phone) wrote:
> I've told exim that when it gets a 421 error (google's "shut up
> you're spam" error) it should stop trying that host for 12 hours.
> (Which, you'll note, is not how a spammer would try to solve this
> problem, in case you didn't believe me before :).
>
> What I'm seeing in the logs is retries *several times a second*.


I think it likely that you are not queuing new messages, but are instead
trying to deliver them immediately, despite your high volume.

----------------------------8< cut here >8------------------------------
  * When it encounters a local delivery during a queue run, Exim checks its
    retry database to see if there has been a previous temporary delivery
    failure for the address before running the local transport. If there was a
    previous failure, Exim does not attempt a new delivery until the retry time
    for the address is reached. However, this happens only for delivery
    attempts that are part of a queue run. Local deliveries are always
    attempted when delivery immediately follows message reception, even if
    retry times are set for them. This makes for better behaviour if one
    particular message is causing problems (for example, causing quota
    overflow, or provoking an error in a filter file).
----------------------------8< cut here >8------------------------------


For your setup, you probably want injection into the list management
software to be as quick as possible, so I recommend setting:

queue_smtp_domains = *

and having queue-runners launch once per minute. With this, all
mail-delivery is under queue-runner control and you're more likely to be
able to reuse existing SMTP connections. Plus, you'll not force
immediate delivery. Though you might want to grab fix 4.82/TF/01 from
git, to get improved handling of intermittently undeliberable addresses.
That's commits:

ba9af0af397dd7d395378b883f8d9beb3bdd5ffd
1ddeb334a49cdd6ec28f982f4a8429503720633b

-Phil