Package: nullmailer
Version: 1.00RC7-22

I'm running nullmailer on debian sarge on many systems. They all use a central machine, running Sendmail 8.13.4-3 as their mail relay. I find that nullmailer will keep re-trying a message despite receiving a permanent SMTP error from the mail relay.

For example, if I send an email to a non-existent user with:

$ echo "test" | mailx -s "Bad Address Test" -v [EMAIL PROTECTED]

This mail is shown in nullmailer's queue as:

$ mailq
2005-09-20 11:06:13  328 bytes

On the central mail server, we see that nullmailer is continually trying to send to the non-existent user every minute:

Sep 20 11:06:13 mercury mta-daemon[22077]: j8KA6DrS022077: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>... User unknown Sep 20 11:06:13 mercury mta-daemon[22081]: j8KA6DIu022081: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>... User unknown Sep 20 11:07:13 mercury mta-daemon[22097]: j8KA7DHj022097: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>... User unknown Sep 20 11:08:13 mercury mta-daemon[22277]: j8KA8DqD022277: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>... User unknown Sep 20 11:09:13 mercury mta-daemon[22938]: j8KA9DTI022938: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>... User unknown Sep 20 11:10:13 mercury mta-daemon[23092]: j8KAADXJ023092: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>... User unknown Sep 20 11:11:13 mercury mta-daemon[23103]: j8KABD9X023103: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>... User unknown Sep 20 11:12:13 mercury mta-daemon[23138]: j8KACDUM023138: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>... User unknown

Sniffing an SMTP exchange shows the following ("<" means data from the mail server, and ">" means data to the mail server):

TCP Handshake
< 220 mercury ESMTP Ready
> HELO helium.nta-monitor.com
< 250 mercury.nta-monitor.com Hello argon.nta-monitor.com [192.168.124.7], pleased to meet you
> MAIL FROM:<[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
< 250 2.1.0 <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>... Sender ok
> RCPT TO:<[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
< 550 5.1.1 <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>... User unknown
TCP Closedown

There are three issues here, from most to least serious:

a) nullmailer is ignoring the 550 permanent SMTP error, and is re-trying the message later; b) The message never appears to time out from the queue - I've seen messages that are months old still queued; and
c) nullmailer closes the TCP connection without sending a QUIT.

Regards,

Roy Hills


--
Roy Hills                                    Tel:   +44 1634 721855
NTA Monitor Ltd                              FAX:   +44 1634 721844
14 Ashford House, Beaufort Court,
Medway City Estate,                          Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Rochester, Kent ME2 4FA, UK WWW: http://www.nta-monitor.com/


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