[exim] -qqff-like behaviour without the queuerunner?

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Author: Maarten van Baarsel
Date:  
To: exim-users
Subject: [exim] -qqff-like behaviour without the queuerunner?
Hi,

Is there an exim incantation possible to deliver a lot of frozen mails to the
same domain over 1 connection without using a separate queuerunner with -qqff?



Yesterday I had a problem with MessageLabs refusing connections when
delivering mails to a domain of a customer of ours. Once a connection had
succeeded mails got through, but four connections later messagelabs refused
connections again. My working hypothesis is that they implement some sort of
fail2ban-like behaviour, and once triggered you stay on the 'bad boys'-list
for a while.

But, once you have a lot of mail queued up the normal queuerunners keep trying
to deliver, the connections never succeed, and the queue keeps growing so you
never got off the bad-boy list.

As a temporary solution I froze all mails to the domain, waited an hour and
ran a single queuerunner with -qqff but it didn't really deliver all mails
over a single connection because, as far as i can see, before the 'second run'
of the -qqff takes place all frozen mails are thawed which are then free for
the normal queuerunners to deliver.

I realize that I could have stopped the normal queuerunners but that would've
stopped all other mail on the queue from being delivered...

I tried exim -v -M [lots of messageids], but all mails got delivered over a
separate connection.


The documentation for queue_smtp_domains did not help me out, because it says
"a delivery process is started whenever a message is received ... but instead
the message waits on the queue for the next queue run" and my messages are
already on the queue.

http://www.exim.org/exim-html-current/doc/html/spec_html/ch-main_configuration.html

Ideas?

Maarten.