On 9/26/2010 6:23 PM, Stefan Monnier wrote:
Postfix attempts to return bounced mail to the envelope sender address.
If postfix receives a permanent error when trying to deliver the bounce
message to the envelope sender, then the mail is discarded to prevent loops.
Evidence of what happened and why is always recorded in the mail log.
I understand it can't send it anywhere (at least in my case, if the
relayhost rejects the message, there's nowhere to send the message
and/or the bounce), but can't it save the email in some local file,
at least?
Especially when the email originated locally (i.e. was not received via
SMTP but via /usr/sbin/sendmail)?
If postfix gets a permanent error when delivering the mail,
and another permanent error when delivering the bounce, there
is no sane action other than discarding the mail. Any other
automatic action could cause a loop and subsequent meltdown of
the server.
You can add -o soft_bounce=yes to the "smtp ... smtp"
transport in master.cf to tell postfix to keep the mail in the
queue, but also cause postfix to continue to retry delivery.
This can cause problems of its own, so it's not a default
setting. But at least the mail stays in the queue.
http://www.postfix.org/postconf.5.html#soft_bounce
-- Noel Jones
