>Of course, if X is something like 6 hours, then it only takes your >connection to be down for a few minutes when it tries the first few times, >and the message could easily take 24 hours to get to you. >
Well actually your connection would have to be down a couple of times in sync with when they tried for that scenario to occur. If you don't have a connection and server and software that can regularly stay up for six hours (hey we are talking Linux here as the server right just to keep this vaguely on topic) then you should question whether you should be hosting a recipient mail server. However one important point that you need to consider is that if you don't have a secondary the mail will queue on the senders mail system. Thus they can ask their sysadmin to check if the mail has gone, and ask them to force the connection and when the mail is still there they'd know you had problems and might be bothered to call you where as if you have a secondary then they'll see the mail disappear from their queue and think it's on it's way where as in reality until your server and connection rise from the ashes you ain't getting any mail. So you might reduce the time taken to recieve mail in some senario's by having a secondary (particularly if you have some control over it and can prompt it to forward the mail using ETRN which in this case at $11/month I doubt) I wouldn't be bothered myself as I believe that letting the sender and recipients mail server commicate directly is more reliable and secure as it means that the message can be located by either the sender or recipient. The addition of a third party (particularly if you don't have any control over them) just complicates the issue. As for the question as to why secondaries are so popular buggered if I know but then again 95% of the world uses windoze on the desktop so reason doesn't always follow logic. rgds Pete -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ More Info: http://lists.slug.org.au/listinfo/slug
