Mail Queue with a Huge msg.

[SupermanInNY]

Hi All,

I have a user who has a distribution list with 526 names on it.
Not a spam,. but registered forum users.
He sent the msg to them all and they are listed in one big huge email list. The size of the msg is only:

1.1K

The email has been sitting in the queue for 3 hours and has not left it.
I've tried to force it out with:


exim -qff -C /etc/exim_outgoing.conf &

and it showed on my ps fax
but it didn't clear the queue.

I see in the msg when looking in it entries like this:

1B91BI-0002T1-2p-H
nobody 99 99
<amir@emordim.net>
1080822024 0
-ident nobody
-received_protocol local
-body_linecount 19
-auth_id nobody
-auth_sender nobody@bess.shev.com
-local
YY kim_nahum@walla.co.il
YY amir@emordim.net
YY KARINED@BARAK.CO.IL
YY ERIEURI@difh.com
YY ELANA1FEL@hotmail.com
YY Admin@mix4ever.com
YY A.@CO.IL
YN 777@777.com
NN 123@walla.co.il
YY AAERIEURI@DIFH.COM
NN A.@co.il
NN AAERIEURI@difh.com
YY DANA@walla.co.il
YY BARBIES@hotmail.co.il
YY BAR@walla.co.il
NN BAR@WALLA.CO.IL
NN BARBIES@HOTMAIL.CO.IL
YN DANA@WALLA.CO.IL
NN BINMAN@walla.co.il
YY DOR_@dor.net.il
NN DOR_@DOR.NET.IL


and the list goes on..

Any suggestions?

-Alon.

[cbwass]

It just means that it has not been able to deliver to all recipients on the list, the list stays intact until all mails have been sent. It's maybe only one or two recipient that the program has not been able to send too. It will keep trying every mail run to send to the addresses that did not work first time.

[SupermanInNY]

What are those?

YY
YN
YY
NN

Do they mean anything?
(obviously they do).
My guess on those is that they are either success or failure attempts, but I'd like to know more about this legend and how to interpret it.

Also,. for how long will this msg stay in the queue?
What is the time limit for a msg to stay in the queue before it gets expanged?

Thanks,

-Alon.

[chirpy]

Also,. for how long will this msg stay in the queue?

That is determined by your /etc/exim_outgoing.conf file at the end. If you look for the section:

# This single retry rule applies to all domains and all errors. It specifies
# retries every 15 minutes for 2 hours, then increasing retry intervals,
# starting at 1 hour and increasing each time by a factor of 1.5, up to 16
# hours, then retries every 8 hours until 4 days have passed since the first
# failed delivery.
begin retry

* * F,2h,15m; G,16h,1h,1.5; F,4d,8h

The last line is the actual configuration setting and the comments above it describe what will happen. So, if yours is set to the same settings, the email could be in the queue around 5 days.

As the the NN NY YY settings, these are probably explained over at http://www.exim.org. I'll go and check and report back.

[chirpy]

OK,

The NN YY YN NY and XX fields are a bit complicated and based on a binary tree of email address expanations. For the purposes of email tracking, I would ignore them. There's a full explaination if you're really interested on the Exim site that explains the format of these spool files here:
http://www.exim.org/exim-html-4.10/d...l/spec_48.html

Just to be clear:

My guess on those is that they are either success or failure attempts

That is not what they represent.

[SupermanInNY]

Ok.. I check the /etc/exim_outgoing.conf and indeed it is identical (prob the default).
I also visited the website link you provided and by far this is way to complicated for me to make heads and tails of this Tree branches they are referring there.
I'll stick with the /etc/exim_outgoing.conf configuration which I'm able to understand as it is in plain English .
Thanks for helping me with this. It makes it clearer to know the retry and expunge rules.

Thanks again,

-Alon.