[rt-users] Failed mail delivery when web server is not running

[Les Mikesell]

On Tue, 2005-10-04 at 23:00, Tim Pritlove wrote:

> What we didn't know was that rt-mailgate obviously expects the web  
> service to be running as it contacts the RT system for permissions  
> and other information before delivering the message to a particular  
> queue. As the web server wasn't running, the delivery failed.
> 
> This is already strange as I would have expected delivery to be  
> totally independent from the running web server using a local binding  
> to the database and do proper checking based on its contents.

Posting to the web interface is actually an advantage since
the mail gateway doesn't have to run on the same machine or
have the database client installed.


> But it got worse: when the connection to the mail server fails and  
> produces errors, this error condition is not signaled back to the MTA  
> (in this case: postfix). The MTA thinks the e-mail has been delivered  
> the message by rt-mailgate properly (which it didn't) and erases the  
> message from its queues.
> 
> Result: we lost 2 days of incoming messages.
> 
> My questions:
> 
> - did we understand how RT works here correctly?
> - if yes, is there an option for webserver-less delivery?
> - why does the rt-mailgate process not produce proper errors to postfix?

A failed delivery should generate an error number 75 which
sendmail considers a temporary failure for local deliveries
and will retry.   Postfix should observe the same convention.

-- 
  Les Mikesell
    les at futuresource.com