On 9/26/2010 6:59 PM, Stefan Monnier wrote:
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)?
Postfix is a Mail TRANSFER Agent; it is not a Mail STORAGE Agent. Think of
it like a bricks and mortar post office and mail. If mail is undeliverable,
it is returned to the return address. Once returned, the post office is done
with it; the post office does not archive a copy.
Sounds fine to me.
If the mail cannot be returned to the return address, it is for all
practical purposes discarded.
That describes the behavior I see, but in the case where the mail
originates locally, this behavior is clearly suboptimal: When the origin
of the message is /usr/sbin/sendmail, it doesn't seem completely
far-fetched to consider that the return-address is a local file.
You could use a local address (some domain listed in
mydestination and delivered locally) for your sender address
and convert that to your ISP external address during
successful delivery using smtp_generic_maps. This is a fairly
standard SOHO setup. See
http://www.postfix.org/SOHO_README.html#fantasy
If you can't adjust the sender address, you can use
soft_bounce=yes to keep the mail in the queue for
$maximal_queue_lifetime (default 5 days) to give yourself time
to examine stuck mail manually.
-- Noel Jones
