Mailing List Archive: Strange behavior

hi all,

does a log file entry

delivery 40846: deferral: Sorry,_I_wasn't_able_to_establish_an_SMTP_connection._(#4.4.1)/

mean that there was an actual delivery attempt?

The other server was temporarily down but the problem was already fixed.

Sending new mail to this server or an ALRM signal to qmail-send caused these
messages to appear in the log without any IP packet going out to the
destination server via the network (I checked with tcpdump). It seems that
qmail did not even try to reach the server. After a while, the mails went
through.

Regards,

Michael Brunnbauer

--
++ Michael Brunnbauer
++ netEstate GmbH
++ Geisenhausener Straße 11a
++ 81379 München
++ Tel +49 89 32 19 77 80
++ Fax +49 89 32 19 77 89
++ E-Mail brunni@netestate.de
++ http://www.netestate.de/
++
++ Sitz: München, HRB Nr.142452 (Handelsregister B München)
++ USt-IdNr. DE221033342
++ Geschäftsführer: Michael Brunnbauer, Franz Brunnbauer
++ Prokurist: Dipl. Kfm. (Univ.) Markus Hendel

Thus said Michael Brunnbauer on Thu, 16 Oct 2014 18:42:01 +0200:

> does a log file entry
>
> delivery 40846: deferral: Sorry,_I_wasn't_able_to_establish_an_SMTP_connection._(#4.4.1)/
>
> mean that there was an actual delivery attempt?

Yes, it means that qmail attempted to deliver the message (hence an
actual delivery id of 40846) to the SMTP server.

> The other server was temporarily down but the problem was already
> fixed.

If the problem was already fixed, then it would have not had to defer
the delivery. qmail will retry delivery to the server later, and if the
problem has been resolved, then it will deliver successfully and be
removed from the queue.

Andy
--
TAI64 timestamp: 40000000543ffdd5