Oops, you're right - typed the wrong parameter name! Regarding the error counts, I see what you're getting at - when taking into consideration how often a message can be retried over any given span of time, it makes error count pretty irrelevant. I suppose if I want the message to bounce after x number of failures, I should just compute the average time it would take to produce that condition and shorten "maximal_queue_lifetime" to that number.
Thanks again for your help! -Rem -----Original Message----- From: owner-postfix-us...@postfix.org [mailto:owner-postfix-us...@postfix.org] On Behalf Of Wietse Venema Sent: Wednesday, September 02, 2009 10:20 AM To: Postfix users Subject: Re: Deferred queue settings? Remy Lambert: > Awesome, this is what I needed - thanks! > > I see that what ended up happening in my case is the > "bounce_queue_lifetime" default maximum of 432000 seconds (5 days) > was eventually reached. I'll shorten that up to 3 days for my > purposes...if it's something on our side we can fix it way before > then, and if it's not our problem then our users need to know > quickly so they can get on the phone. You need to update maximal_queue_lifetime. > I don't see any parameter that tracks error counts for deferred > items - in the 120 hours that the message was deferred it suffered > as many errors, at least - surely enough to alert the user that > there is trouble. Is there a way for me to configure any sort of > error-tracking functionality, either built-in or scripted? Limiting the retry COUNTS makes no sense. Consider that a host is down for 24 hours. No matter how often you try, mail won't go through until the host comes back. In fact, Postfix increases the retry time, up to a configurable limit, as mail gets older. > I'm going to take your advice and get a book on Postfix - there > are many! I've always been fond of the O'Reilly series, any > suggestions? I'll let other people speak to that. > I come from the land of MS Exchange so, although I'm competent > with mail server management, this is all new to me! Welcome, stranger. Wietse > Thanks for your help! > > -Rem > -----Original Message----- > From: owner-postfix-us...@postfix.org > [mailto:owner-postfix-us...@postfix.org] On Behalf Of Wietse Venema > Sent: Wednesday, September 02, 2009 9:49 AM > To: Postfix users > Subject: Re: Deferred queue settings? > > Remy Lambert: > > I'm a Postfix n00b, so I may be asking a loaded question...but here goes: > > > > Recently, a user of mine sent an email to an incorrect address - > > he garbled the domain name. It took six days for our mail server > > to decide that it was undeliverable... > [snip] > > Indeed, the mail system does not know whether the user made a typing > error, or whether the address is correct and the host or network > are down. > > > In my opinion, this should have happened much, much sooner. > > See http://www.postfix.org/TUNING_README.html for an overview > of available options. > > The time before return is configurable. The default is 5 days so > that email will survive a weekend outage plus time for repair. > > http://www.postfix.org/postconf.5.html#maximal_queue_lifetime > > Postfix can also be configured to send mail when there is a delay: > > http://www.postfix.org/postconf.5.html#delay_warning_time > > If you are totally unfamiliar with managing an email server, the > Postfix manpages alone will not get far, and you should consider > one of the excellent books that is written on Postfix. > > Wietse > >
