Mailing List Archive

-Mg: no "cancelled by adminstrator" text, despite the doc say it will
There is a mismatch between the documentation and the actual behaviour.
This message has a reproduction method, and additional details, compared to
https://lists.exim.org/lurker/message/20230819.231448.32a47d0e.en.html
.

Breaking lines for readability, but otherwise quoting
https://exim.org/exim-html-current/doc/html/spec_html/ch-the_exim_command_line.html#SECID39

-Mg <message id> <message id> ...
This option requests Exim to give up trying to deliver the listed
messages, including any that are frozen. However, if any of the
messages are active, their status is not altered. For non-bounce
messages, a delivery error message is sent to the sender, containing
the text “cancelled by administrator”. Bounce messages are just
discarded. This option can be used only by an admin user.

Follows how to reproduce a case where, under the conditions of the quote,
a bounce message did not have the “cancelled by administrator” text.
In order to reproduce, there should be a mail server, and an exim instance
which is sending messages through this mail server. The mail server is
acting as a smart host for the exim instance. But Does not get messages
to deliver. There fore, there is no need to configure the mail server to
act as a smart host. What is important, at least in order to reproduce the
problem the way I confronted it, is to somehow make the exim client to
defer sending the message to the smart host. For example, by one of
1) Have a firewall block the connection between the two.
2) Have the mail server presents a certificate which the exim client
refuses to accept. Such as a self signed certificate. Which leads to
the exim client log

defer (-37) ...: TLS session: (SSL_connect): error:0A000086:SSL routines::certificate verify failed

So far there is a smarh host for an exim client which the exim client

defer sending messages to. Now for the exim client. For that, I use exim
with the default configuration. That is, a copy of the file at
src/src/configure.default. Within the config file of the client, I make
a single change. Which is to uncomment the macro for ROUTER_SMRTHOST, and
point it to the mail server. After activating the client new configuration,
I am sending an email message with the exim client. The receipiant is
chosen such that the message should be delivered by the smart host. The
message won't be sent to the smart host because the exim client will defer
it. So the exim client would keep retrying. At a random time between
retries, the administrator of the exim client should cancel the delivery
with a -Mg command line option. And here is the problem. No "cancelled
by administrator" text appears at the bounced message. The summary of the
log in the exim client, when a bad smart host certificate is used, is

orig_id <= P=local
orig_id SSL verify error
orig_id == R=smarthost T=smarthost_smtp defer (-37) : TLS session: (SSL_connect): error:0A000086:SSL routines::certificate verify failed
orig_id retry time not reached
orig_id cancelled by root
new_id <= <> R=orig_id
new_id => sender
new_id Completed

Is this a bug? Should I file a bug report?

--
u34

--
## subscription configuration (requires account):
## https://lists.exim.org/mailman3/postorius/lists/exim-users.lists.exim.org/
## unsubscribe (doesn't require an account):
## exim-users-unsubscribe@lists.exim.org
## Exim details at http://www.exim.org/
## Please use the Wiki with this list - http://wiki.exim.org/
Re: -Mg: no "cancelled by adminstrator" text, despite the doc say it will [ In reply to ]
On 20/09/2023 21:56, u34--- via Exim-users wrote:
> Is this a bug? Should I file a bug report?

It's less likely to be forgotten if you do
--
Cheers,
Jeremy


--
## subscription configuration (requires account):
## https://lists.exim.org/mailman3/postorius/lists/exim-users.lists.exim.org/
## unsubscribe (doesn't require an account):
## exim-users-unsubscribe@lists.exim.org
## Exim details at http://www.exim.org/
## Please use the Wiki with this list - http://wiki.exim.org/