[Mailman-Users] Bounce processing questions (feature, or bug?)

[Mark Sapiro]

Barry Finkel wrote:

>Hank van Cleef <vancleef at lostwells.net> wrote, in part,
>
<snip>
>>
>>For the four days June 13-17, mail went verizon.net normally,
>>dsn-2.0.0, stat=Sent 
>>
>>Two Verizon users have contacted me and told me that they had received
>>no mail from our list since the 11th; that they had contacted Verizon
>>support, and had been told that Verizon was not blocking or dumping
>>our list mails.  Both users are sufficiently knowledgeable to have
>>looked for shunting to a "spam" or "bulk" file.
<snip>
>
>It seems to me that 
>
>     stat=Service unavailable
>
>means that the inbound mailer is not available at the moment.
>This should result in a 400-level SMTP retryable reject, not a
>500-level hard reject.


This status is often used to reject mail that is detected as spam.


>The statement
>
>     "Verizon was not blocking or dumping our list mails"
>
>is technically a correct statement; Verizon is not accepting mail.


If you re-read the sections I left above, you'll see that Hank says
from June 13-17 list mail to verizon.net was accepted with an extended
2.0.0 status but was not delivered to the recipient's inbox, bulk or
spam folders.


>Another thought comes to mind - when this happens, is Verizon rejecting
>all mail, or is that mailer selectively not accepting mail?  If
>Verizon is selectively rejecting mail, then I would expect a different
>message than
>
>     dsn=5.0.0 stat=Service unavailable.


Again, this response is often sent in response to the end of data to
indicate that the data was unacceptable.

It can also be sent earlier in the SMTP transaction if the MTA doesn't
like the sender.

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