On 30 Nov 95 at 9:53, Alan Deikman wrote:
> guess what? About 50% of the "pruned addresses" resulted in
> a subscriber e-mailing back "hey, why was I unsubscribed?"
>
> In other words, I am getting bounce messages for mail that was
> *also* delivered, and of course the recipient doesn't have
> a clue unless I complain. Is this the same experience the rest
> of you have? How do you sort true invalid addresses from
> semi-true addresses which also deliver? Or should we even
First, as others have mentioned, not all bounce messages are
permanent errors. Things like "message deferred", "service
unavailable", or "disk full" are usually transient. Ignore them
unless they keep up for an extended period.
Usually errors like "user unknown" or "host unknown" are permanent
errors that aren't going to go away. Remove them if they keep up.
Sometimes they are short-lived and caused by a temporary
configuration error that gets fixed later. This is often the cause
of "why did you bounce me when I'm getting mail?"
Then there is my favorite stinker. Once in a while you'll find an
address that keeps on bouncing with a permanent error ("user
unknown", etc) but they insist they are getting mail. This type is
caused by a misconfigured DNS secondary or lower priority MX host.
So most of their mail gets through, but every so often mail is
rejected when the primary path doesn't work and a the secondary DNS
server or MX host has to be used.
I had quite a few go-rounds with one person who had a broken setup
like this, who was really mad about me bouncing him. These are the
cases where keeping a copy of the bounce is really handy later.
- Alan
----
Alan Millar E-Mail: amillar@bolis.SF-Bay.org
System Administrator Web: http://metro.turnpike.net/metro/amillar
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