[Mailman-Users] Queue problems

[Allan Odgaard]

I transferred a lot of list members from a previous list. A dozen of  
these has left errors like the following in `logs/smtp-failures`:

     delivery to «address» failed with code 450:
     4.1.2 «address»: Recipient address rejected:
     Domain not found

This is interpreted as a temporary failure so Mailman will put the  
letter into `qfiles/retry`. Every 15th minute the retry qrunner will  
move all the retry letters back into `qfiles/out`.

My queue had gathered around 70 emails and had 10 recipients or so  
with this error, so it took more than half an hour to get through all  
of the queue (only to start over).

Since the queue is FIFO _without_ lowering the priority for retries,  
it meant that normal subscribers saw a long delay before their letter  
was delivered to other list subscribers.

I unsubscribed all addresses that were listed in `logs/smtp-failures`  
and then I had to manually delete letters from the qfiles.

But now I see another subscriber has a similar problem and is causing  
letters to pile up in qfiles affecting delivery to healthy recipients.

Seems to me that there is a flaw in this system (having retries pile  
up and starve regular delivery).


Using Mailman 2.1.9 (Ubuntu installation).