Andrew Hodgson wrote:

Reading previous emails seem to suggest I can make Mailman output to a different SMTP server by changing the options in the configuration files. I would quite like to do this, as currently Mailman is on a server which doesn't do much email, and the Exim on that machine outputs to the destination SMTP server in any case.

You can set SMTPHOST and SMTPPORT in mm_cfg.py to use any server/port that will relay your mail.

My only question is: Is this a common deployment, and what happens if the destination SMTP server is down?

I don't know how common it is. One use is to set Mailman to use a port other than 25 but still on localhost so the MTA can treat Mailman's mail differently.

If the server, whether remote or local, is down, Mailman will see an error when trying to connect. This will be logged in Mailman's smtp-failure log, probably as a 'low level smtp error', and the delivery will be retried at 15 minute intervals until it either succeeds or DELIVERY_RETRY_PERIOD (default 5 days) elapses.

Note that Defaults.py also contains a setting for DELIVERY_RETRY_WAIT, but this is not used. The 15 minutes is hard coded in RetryRunner.py.

-- Mark Sapiro <mark@msapiro.net> The highway is for gamblers, San Francisco Bay Area, California better use your sense - B. Dylan