[Mailman-Users] How to know if all messages were distributed

[Regis]

Hello,

Thanks for your great answer.

 > I'll assume that you have perfectly good reasons for using Qmail
 > rather than Exim or Postfix that are more commonly used with Mailman,

Actually... no ! That's why I have now set Postfix as messaging server 
on my VPS from Plesk ;-)

 > First question: *which queue*?  Mailman has its queues, which you can
 > examine using ls on the queue directory or mailman/bin/show_qfiles on
 > the individual queued messages.  Qmail also has its own queue(s), and
 > if the messages are in the Qmail queues, *it's very unlikely to be a
 > Mailman-related problem*.  By design, once a mail server has accepted
 > a message, the mail server is fully responsible for its deliver, or
 > for reporting non-delivery.

It was the Qmail queue, which is visible in Plesk.

 > You've cross checked the Message-IDs?  What do you mean by "return
 > receipt"?  Are you sure they are not "bounce" messages, which indicate
 > that mailwas *not* delivered?

No. It was automatic responses from the messages recipients.

 > I don't know about where Centos keeps Mailman's logs and queues,
 > [...]
 > For the qfiles, most likely you just care about if they're there in
 > "outgoing" or "retry".  You might also look in the "shunt" queue
 > directory for "broken" messages that Mailman can't process.

I had a look to all these logs but difficult to see which messages where 
sent or not... it doesn't matter i will send a new mailing in few weeks 
and i hope it will work better with Postfix ;-)

Thanks again.
Regis.


-------- Message original --------
Sujet : [Mailman-Users] How to know if all messages were distributed
De : Stephen J. Turnbull <stephen at xemacs.org>
Pour : regis92130 at gmail.com
Copie à : mailman-users at python.org
Date : Tue, 26 May 2015 00:46:33 +0900

> Regis writes:
>
>   > Indeed 72 hours after the mailing, i continue to see permanently about
>   > 500 messages in the queue of my messaging server (i have a linux centOS
>   > VPS with Qmail).
>
> Using Qmail is asking for trouble.  Dan Bernstein is unquestionably a
> genius, but his software tends to assume that the world is a saner
> place than it actually is, and doesn't work and play well with others.
> I'll assume that you have perfectly good reasons for using Qmail
> rather than Exim or Postfix that are more commonly used with Mailman,
> but you should be aware that most of the folks on this list are
> experienced with Exim, Postfix, and/or Sendmail, and for Qmail-specific
> issues, or interactions between Qmail and Mailman, you probably need
> to go to a Qmail channel.
>
> First question: *which queue*?  Mailman has its queues, which you can
> examine using ls on the queue directory or mailman/bin/show_qfiles on
> the individual queued messages.  Qmail also has its own queue(s), and
> if the messages are in the Qmail queues, *it's very unlikely to be a
> Mailman-related problem*.  By design, once a mail server has accepted
> a message, the mail server is fully responsible for its deliver, or
> for reporting non-delivery.
>
>   > But what is strange is that actually some of those messages were
>   > really distributed : I am sure because I got return receipt emails
>   > for them !
>
> You've cross checked the Message-IDs?  What do you mean by "return
> receipt"?  Are you sure they are not "bounce" messages, which indicate
> that mailwas *not* delivered?
>
>   > So i am confused on the total distribution of my mailing to all
>   > subscribers : is there a possibility so see the number of messages
>   > processed or not yet processed directly from the server (logs...) ?
>
> I don't know about where Centos keeps Mailman's logs and queues, but
> yes, you can look at the logs and queues once you find them.  The
> "post" log tells you what posts Mailman has received, but not their
> disposition.  The "smtp" log tells you what messages have been sent
> (by message-id and time, and how long it took to process the smtp
> transaction), but due to the nature of the outgoing runner, there are
> typically many log messages for each post.  Mark may have a script for
> summing them up to find out how many have actually been delivered.
>
> I'm not sure exactly what goes into the smtp-failure log, but I would
> suppose that would record cases where qmail tells mailman that it
> can't deliver the message for some reason.  I'm not sure if it records
> tempfails, and for tempfails there's no way for qmail to tell mailman
> about retries whether they succeed or fail.
>
> For the qfiles, most likely you just care about if they're there in
> "outgoing" or "retry".  You might also look in the "shunt" queue
> directory for "broken" messages that Mailman can't process.
>
>