[Mailman-Users] Too many recipients

Lindsay Haisley fmouse-mailman at fmp.com
Wed Oct 24 00:11:28 CEST 2012


On Tue, 2012-10-23 at 13:45 -0700, Mark Sapiro wrote:
> On 10/23/2012 1:21 PM, Rodrigo Abrantes Antunes wrote:
> > 
> > I've set SMTP_MAX_RCPTS to 250 in mailman and smtpd_recipient_limit to 300
> > in postfix and I'm still getting these errors.
>
> Did you restart Mailman

IMHO, a restart of postfix would probably be in order, too.  I know that
many settings in my mail server, courier MTA, require a restart of the
server after changing them in order for them to take effect.

Mark, Brad, etc.  I have a question here.  Rodrigo says that in his
Mailman smtp log, a SMTP transaction to contas for 828 recipients was
"completed in 1.705 seconds"

Mailman also reports a _temporary_ failure of 450 addresses.  Because
this is a 4xx class error, can one assume that after accepting
smtpd_recipient_limit "rcpt to" addresses, postfix started rejecting
each new address with a 452 (4.5.3) error, and that Mailman continued to
attempt to send recipients in spite of this? - after which Mailman sent,
and postfix accepted, the body of the message?

This is the only scenario that makes any sense in light of the reported
temporary failure.  Is Mailman smart enough to pick up the thread on
this and re-send to those addresses which were refused?

The only other possible scenario is that the SMTP server bounced the
entire message after transmission of the message body was complete,
based on an excessive number of recipients.  In this case, wouldn't it
make more sense for the mail server to return a 5xx (permanent) class
error?  

Inquiring minds want to know.  I don't know postfix, and because all my
outgoing lists have VERP personalization enabled, this problem never
comes up here.

-- 
Lindsay Haisley       | "We have met the enemy and he is us."
FMP Computer Services |
512-259-1190          |          -- Pogo
http://www.fmp.com    |



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