Wrong settings or bug? Premature "Permanent" fail since 'retry time not reached'

[ottdev]

What are the optimal settings we should have / I can verify that controls this ?
i.e. WHY is it already declaring a PERMANENT error if the retry time hasn't been reached yet ?

This message was created automatically by mail delivery software.

A message that you sent could not be delivered to one or more of its recipients. This is a permanent error. The following address(es) failed:

  [email protected]
    all hosts for 'bl....er.tld' have been failing for a long time (and retry time not reached)

Just moved to a new server. Reverse DNS hadn't been set up yet for the server IP for the hostname.
This is an email sent from a website form. The external receiving server rejected it with:

SMTP error from remote mail server after initial connection: 450 4.7.1 Client host rejected: cannot find your reverse hostname,

The PTR record has since been corrected, and that email should normally have been requeued and made it thru later.

So why did it deem a PERMANENT error already if it was still due to retry sending later ?
CENTOS 7.9 kvm v92.0.9

 

[cPRex]

Hey there! I've never liked the wording on that message, as the "failing for a long time" would seem to conflict with "retry time not reached."

By the time you get the "failing for a long time" error that indicates that Exim has worked through the retry times and still isn't able to deliver the message. If you have the mail ID you can search the Exim logs directly to get more details on this with this command:

grep xx-xxxxx-xxxxxxx /var/log/exim_mainlog

where the "xx-xxxxx-xxxxxxx" is the mail ID for that specific message. That will show you the entire transaction, which will also show how long it has been retrying.