Angus March: > > If sendmail(1) is unable to en-queue a message, it reports an error. > > In all other cases (message en-queued), error reporting is asynchronous. > > > Well, that's the problem here. There was no bounce, obviously, since > the sender was bogus, and sendmail's return value (as taken from > waitpid()) was 0.
Unlike web apps or instand-messaging apps, email has a store-and-forward architecture. It is by definition not possible to know all delivery problems at mail submission time. Wietse