[geeks] ADMINISTRIVIA: Changes to mail delivery policies

[Greg A. Woods]

[ On Thursday, March 14, 2002 at 13:38:13 (-0600), Bill Bradford wrote: ]
> Subject: Re: [geeks] ADMINISTRIVIA: Changes to mail delivery policies
>
> On Thu, Mar 14, 2002 at 02:26:40PM -0500, Greg A. Woods wrote:
> > What I'm trying to say in this whole mess boils down to the fact that
> > what Bill has done will ultimately take him away from you for even
> > longer than he's gone now.  I.e. he's made the problem worse instead of
> > better, at least for the one particular item I'm discussing.
> 
> Wrong-o.  So far, its *reduced* my workload.

Some other adjustment you made must have reduced your workload and
hidden the adverse affects of incorrectly adjusting maximal_queue_lifetime.

If you have set "maximal_queue_lifetime=24h" then you will not stop any
of the DSNs you were complaining about, and you will likely get more
DSNs from your own mailer, and some of your subscribers will likely
suffer from lost mail that they may value far higher than you do,
possibly complaining to you in person.

I.e. ultimately, on its own, this change _will_ increase your workload.

I cannot currently guess how this change may fit in with other
adjustments you've made, but I do know that you're now not only
mis-interpreting the cause of your headaches, but you are also
mis-interpreting the results you've seen to date.

Please do not ever adjust maximal_queue_lifetime below 4 days on any
production mail server on the public Internet.

-- 
								Greg A. Woods

+1 416 218-0098;  <gwoods at acm.org>;  <g.a.woods at ieee.org>;  <woods at robohack.ca>
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