> Now you can just requeue the mail and try again later. If you do, then
> you are presuming that perhaps it will be fixed later on, but before the
> expiration of the mail.
>
> So why not send the mail on to at least the WORKING secondary MX? That
> at least gets it out of your queue, putting the storage burden on whoever
> is supposedly doing queueing service for the crappy server.
part of the problem, for me at least, is that it is impossible to guarantee
that secondary MX's will, in fact, accept mail for the domain they are
supposed to be MX'ing for. i'd rather hold the mail for a couple days in my
queue and deliver it directly to the host than pass it off to a secondary
that may or may not handle it correctly. at least if i pass it directly to
the host i can guarantee that it's his fault if he loses it then, as opposed
to getting a third party involved.
the more i think about this, the more i think that fallback MX records
aren't really necessary anymore. having 3 or 4 fallback MX hosts was nice
10 years ago when mail could be passed in pony express format, eventually
making its way across the country by store-and-forward, when everyone ran
open relays and cooperated to help the mail get through. that really just
isn't the case anymore for a large part of the world.
there is very little reason for most MTAs to pass mail to a secondary MX
host. if it can't be delivered to the primary, it's fairly likely that it
can't be delivered to the secondary either. moreover, today anyway, it's
likely that the secondary will be improperly configured and will refuse to
accept mail for a domain it's supposed to be MX'ing for. further, it's
quite possible that the secondary won't be able to deliver any sooner and
may ultimately take longer to deliver.
> How is it that people won't notice the breakage if the primary mail server
> isn't accepting mail? If the server accepts connections, and then keeps
> closing them, it's not going to get its mail even from then secondary MX.
so why even attempt to pass the mail to the secondary in that case?
ignoring the firewall issue, to qmail it looks like the primary host
accepted a connection and then dropped it abruptly. why should qmail think
the secondary MX will have better luck?
shag
=====
Judd Bourgeois | CNM Network +1 (805) 520-7170
Software Architect | 1900 Los Angeles Avenue, 2nd Floor
[EMAIL PROTECTED] | Simi Valley, CA 93065
Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum viditur.
