blacklist problems

[David Bandel]

On 1/10/07, Net Llama! <netllama at linux-sxs.org> wrote:
> On Wed, 10 Jan 2007, David Bandel wrote:
> > On 1/10/07, Myles Green <rmg57 at telus.net> wrote:
> >> On Wed, 10 Jan 2007 06:54:09 -0500
> >> "David Bandel" <david.bandel at gmail.com> wrote:
> >>
> >>> Folks,
> >>>
> >>> Looks like one of the blacklists I was using is bad -- rejecting
> >>> everything.  Removed.  Oh, the joys of using blacklists.
> >>
> >> Hi David, thanks for the heads-up. Should we re-send any email sent in the
> >> last (say) couple of hours? Just curious as I sent a query to the list no
> >> more than an hour a go.
> >
> > The reject has been a temporary failure -- try again later.  So the
> > mail servers should resend.  When they will resend depends on the
> > requeue time, some folks set that as low as 15 minutes, others at 1
> > hour or more.
>
> Sadly, the retry time for some servers was rather low (like every 5-10
> minutes), and after X failures, they decided that it was fatal, and mail
> bounced.
>

The admins of those servers need to read the RFCs for mail and
reconfig their servers properly.  Normally, after 4 hours
(configurable, but for the 20+ years I've admin'd mail servers, this
is customary), the sender would get a notification that mail was
delayed, but the server would continue trying for X number of days
(the X normally being about 5, but again configurable), not X number
of attempts.  I assume the blatant disregard for the RFCs comes from
M$ servers.

Ciao,

David A. Bandel
-- 
Focus on the dream, not the competition.
            - Nemesis Air Racing Team motto