[Greylist-users] My problem with greylisting

[Evan Harris]

I've had to contact several mail admins about badly behaved servers, and
I've found that once you get to the person responsible for the mail
server(s), and you point out that they aren't RFC compliant and the specific
section they should be aware of, they are usually very interested in fixing
it.

The only exception is when it's a small organization with a clueless (or no)
admin who doesn't know anything, in which case it's usually better to speak
to a business-type and suggest they get someone more clued.  They may not
understand the details, but if you tell them their server isn't following
the required protocol specs and is likely to "lose" mail, they will look
into it.

Evan


On Tue, 14 Sep 2004, Mogens Kjaer wrote:

> I've installed greylisting (relaydelay) on a mailserver
> with approx 200 users.
>
> The biggest problem I see is that sometimes mails are lost.
>
> We get fax'es and phone calls from people telling us that
> they can't send mail to us.
>
> When I look into the logfiles, the reason is one of:
>
> 1.	The sender's server does not retry at all
> 	after receiving the 451 error.
> 2.	It retries 2-3 times within a couple of
> 	minutes, then gives up.
> 3.	It retries every 24-48 hours for a couple
> 	of days, then gives up.
>
> For 2 and 3, I've had to set $delay_mail_secs to
> 15 minutes, and $auto_record_life_secs to 50 hours,
> however, this is not ideal.
>
> For 1, I've had little luck in complaining to the sender's
> mail administrator, as they "can send mails to
> everyone else".
>
> What do you do to address this problem?
>
> Mogens
> --
> Mogens Kjaer, Carlsberg A/S, Computer Department
> Gamle Carlsberg Vej 10, DK-2500 Valby, Denmark
> Phone: +45 33 27 53 25, Fax: +45 33 27 47 08
> Email: mk at crc.dk Homepage: http://www.crc.dk
>