From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Msuck: nntp://news.gmane.io/gmane.emacs.gnus.general/60409 Path: news.gmane.org!not-for-mail From: "Steven E. Harris" Newsgroups: gmane.emacs.gnus.general Subject: Re: Gnus with Exim Date: Mon, 06 Jun 2005 12:59:21 -0700 Organization: SEH Labs Message-ID: References: <83k6lagmx8.fsf@torus.sehlabs.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: main.gmane.org Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit X-Trace: sea.gmane.org 1118088129 5686 80.91.229.2 (6 Jun 2005 20:02:09 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@sea.gmane.org NNTP-Posting-Date: Mon, 6 Jun 2005 20:02:09 +0000 (UTC) Cc: ding@gnus.org Original-X-From: ding-owner+M8936@lists.math.uh.edu Mon Jun 06 22:01:59 2005 Return-path: Original-Received: from malifon.math.uh.edu ([129.7.128.13]) by ciao.gmane.org with esmtp (Exim 4.43) id 1DfNl4-00053e-7j for ding-account@gmane.org; Mon, 06 Jun 2005 21:59:38 +0200 Original-Received: from localhost ([127.0.0.1] helo=lists.math.uh.edu ident=lists) by malifon.math.uh.edu with smtp (Exim 3.20 #1) id 1DfNky-00034l-00; Mon, 06 Jun 2005 14:59:32 -0500 Original-Received: from util2.math.uh.edu ([129.7.128.23]) by malifon.math.uh.edu with esmtp (Exim 3.20 #1) id 1DfNkt-00034g-00 for ding@lists.math.uh.edu; Mon, 06 Jun 2005 14:59:27 -0500 Original-Received: from quimby.gnus.org ([80.91.224.244]) by util2.math.uh.edu with esmtp (Exim 4.30) id 1DfNkr-0002dP-Ks for ding@lists.math.uh.edu; Mon, 06 Jun 2005 14:59:25 -0500 Original-Received: from [204.193.55.129] (helo=W003275.na.alarismed.com) by quimby.gnus.org with esmtp (Exim 3.35 #1 (Debian)) id 1DfNkq-0001Qh-00 for ; Mon, 06 Jun 2005 21:59:24 +0200 Original-Received: from sharris by W003275.na.alarismed.com with local (Exim 4.50) id IHOI6X-0002D0-Q4; Mon, 06 Jun 2005 12:59:22 -0700 Original-To: David Abrahams Mail-Followup-To: David Abrahams , ding@gnus.org In-Reply-To: (David Abrahams's message of "Mon, 06 Jun 2005 14:31:14 -0400") User-Agent: Gnus/5.110004 (No Gnus v0.4) XEmacs/21.4.13 (cygwin32) X-Spam-Score: -4.9 (----) Precedence: bulk Original-Sender: ding-owner@lists.math.uh.edu Xref: news.gmane.org gmane.emacs.gnus.general:60409 X-Report-Spam: http://spam.gmane.org/gmane.emacs.gnus.general:60409 David Abrahams writes: > Well, actually that's probably enough. I don't normally have errors; > it just seems like my emacs session sometimes locks up for up to a > minute when trying to send mail. That was my original motivation for setting up exim too. But after running exim for several years, I have seen sending errors arise where the queuing and retrying capability turns out to be very convenient. I run my exim daemon with a queue run interval of 10 minutes. Given that my queue is usually empty, the daemon does virtually no work. On the other hand, on the odd chance that a message can't be sent out right away, I don't have to worry much about attending to it later. > The only thing that worries me is what happens in the rare case where > sending *does* actually fail. Exim will send a message back to the sender (you) when it's ready to give up on delivery, or if delivery is taking a very long time. To discuss failure behavior, though, we need to distinguish between transient failures and permanent failures. > Actually, I think there's a better answer. See the enclosed message. > I just need to figure out how to apply what he says there. You might > want to modify your use of &/+ accordingly. I don't think the intentions are the same. While it is nice that the fallback_hosts option can accept multiple hosts, you have to go through the sure-to-fail direct DNS lookup first, wait for that to fail, and only then start trying the list of obliging servers. > It's called exim-config on cygwin ;-) No, the exim4-config package on Debian goes way, way beyond the exim-config in Cygwin. For my setup at home in Debian, the only hand-tweaking I had to do was to get my ISP's unusual SMTP server port specified; at present, despite a few bug reports to the contrary, the server port is not considered to be an important configurable setting. > The ideal thing would be to get the fallback stuff working. > Unfortunately I have to take my computer down the block to test it ;-) I have the fallback stuff set up on my computer at work ("=" for "fallback on FAIL only"), but the fallback scenario never gets triggered. The work setup is different than the one I shared with you. I can make direct connections to /almost/ any SMTP server out there, but, paradoxically, I can't send mail to my coworkers by coming back in to our own SMTP server as pointed to in the public MX records. So, for internal mail, I use a corporate server as a "smart host", but for external mail I use the dnslookup driver to connect directly, and fallback on FAIL to our internal "smart host". > Oh, well *that* might be a better option. I could get the guy who > administers smtp.boost-consulting.com to open a different port for > outgoing SMTP so I can send email that way. That will work in environments that block port 25, and that do /not/ block all ports besides, say, HTTP and HTTPS. Panix runs on port 2525¹. I have yet to find that port blocked anywhere I use my computer. > Then I wouldn't need exim at all, would I? I would still recommend running it. It solves problems that your MUA alone doesn't solve. You started out this inquiry looking for asynchronous sending behavior from Gnus, and getting that extra SMTP port opened won't grant you that behavior. It will make configuring exim to fit your roaming scenario easier. > In fact, I could probably test this by going through smtp.panix.com > if you tell me what port you're using. It's mail.panix.com on port 2525, but you'll need to authenticate if you're not coming in through a Panix connection. [...] > Maybe the enclosed will help. Oh, I see they changed the "+ for DEFER or FAIL" to "&". [...] >> bash-2.05b$ telnet smtp.boost-consulting.com 25 >> Connecting To smtp.boost-consulting.com... >> >> Connecting To smtp.boost-consulting.com...Could not open connection to the > host, on port 25: Connect >> failed >> bash-2.05b$ >> >> > Does it intercept the call and return an error (failure outcome), or >> > does it let you hang until you time-out (defer outcome)? >> >> I think this is defer outcome, yes? > > Yes. > >> Can I set up exim to fallback on defer? This is what I have now: It looks to me as though your ISP is blocking port 25 traffic, so it doesn't make sense to even try using the dnslookup router when you're stuck behind this connection. The "smart host" one is a short-circuit pessimistic version of your dnslookup+fallback: Don't even bother trying to connect directly, and just send it out through smtp.rcn.com. Footnotes: ¹ http://www.panix.com/panix/help/mail.smtp-outside.html -- Steven E. Harris