Mailing-lists behaviour on bounce

[Chuck Swiger]

Jeremie Le Hen wrote:
> I recently have a problem with my primary mail server and some mails
> have bounced today.  Now, everything seems to work.  I know that
> FreeBSD mail servers handle a very large amount of mail addresses, so
> I don't expect them to defer bounced mails for the next five days as
> classical mail servers usually do.

You are confusing the way a 4xx temporary failure is handled versus the way a 
permanent 5xx error (resulting in a bounce) is handled.  The mail 
configuration will attempt to resend messages if it gets a 4xx.

However...

> I checked my subscritions on the
> Mailman interface on FreeBSD wedsite and my "bounce score" is actually
> 1.0.  I wonder whether I'm going to get the bounced mails later in the
> night or if they are lost forever because of a drastic policy and I'll
> have to browse the archives to read them.

...this implies that your mail server generated a 5xx error message, which 
means "don't attempt to retry delivering this message".  What happened after 
that is normal, rather than the result of some drastic policy on the part of 
the FreeBSD listserver/MTA.

The mailing lists have archives available so that you can look for any 
messages you did not receiving during the problematic interval.  See the URLs 
in the header and footer of any message from the list.

-- 
-Chuck