[Bug 710] New: lists.openmoko.org SMTP server not acking mail promptly; retries appear as duplicate messages

[bugzilla-daemon at bugzilla.openmoko.org]

http://bugzilla.openmoko.org/cgi-bin/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=710

           Summary: lists.openmoko.org SMTP server not acking mail promptly;
                    retries appear as duplicate messages
           Product: Site Infrastructure
           Version: unspecified
          Platform: Macintosh
        OS/Version: MacOS X
            Status: NEW
          Severity: normal
          Priority: P2
         Component: Lists
        AssignedTo: chtsai at openmoko.org
        ReportedBy: sean at theSheedys.com
                CC: buglog at lists.openmoko.org


The lists.openmoko.org SMTP server responds promptly to at least the common SMTP
commands like HELO, MAIL FROM and RCPT TO commands.  But it does not promptly
respond with a "250 OK" after a "." on a line by itself is sent by the sending
server after it has sent the body of a message.

It appears that some mail servers are timing out, and then later attempt to
resend the message.  However, the lists.openmoko.org SMTP server (exim,
apparently) is treating the original message as good and forwarding it to the
list members.  When the sending server retries, lists.openmoko.org treats it as
a new message and the process repeats, leading to multiple messages.

I actually am surmising this process from what others on the community list have
reported and from my own test:

In a test I performed by telneting into lists.openmoko.org port 25 and entering
SMTP commands to manually send a message to community at lists.openmoko.org, I was
able to send a message successfully, but had to wait over well over three
minutes for the "250 OK" after ending the DATA command with the "." on a line by
itself.  All other SMTP commands that I sent were responded to promptly.

In consulting documentation on the web about exim, it appears that it is
possible to configure exim to do stuff like spam checking of a message before
responding.  My guess is that something is attempting to validate the message
before sending the "250 OK".



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