[Mailman-Users] strange occurrence - search did not help

[Mark Sapiro]

Glenn Kelley wrote:
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>One of our clients has a strange occurrence with their Mail Man software.
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>This is an excerpt from their support request:
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>Several people have asked the following question.
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>I am often getting your responses to questions before the original emails
>reach me. In the case of this thread, I received your answers to Candace's
>third email before I even received her first one. This time, her stuff was
>quoted throughout your email, but it's happened before and only your
>response came through. It's also happened with George E. and Andrew Bear's
>emails. Just thought I'd let you know how I'm receiving on this end.
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This is not a Mailman issue at all.

A posts. Mailman delivers the post to the outgoing MTA for all
recipients. B receives the post and replies. Mailman delivers the
reply to the outgoing MTA for all recipients. C receives B's reply
before A's post. This is not unusual. Mail delivery is complex, and
delays can occur anywhere. Receiving mail out of sequence is not
unusual, particularly if the recipients MTA is busy and not listening
continuously.

To diagnose this further from the sending end, you have to look at the
sending MTA's logs for the sends to the recipieint who received out of
sequence. You may find that the send of A's post to C was delayed
because of some SMTP issue between the MTAs and B's reply was not
delayed. Or you may see nothing unusual because the delay occurred
further down the delivery pipe.

-- 
Mark Sapiro <msapiro at value.net>       The highway is for gamblers,
San Francisco Bay Area, California    better use your sense - B. Dylan