[comp.mail.sendmail] How to requeue a message

ehrlich@cs.psu.edu (Dan Ehrlich) (02/07/91)

We have the following set up.  All mail for users in the CS deparment
rumbles through one machine.  We would prefer to not have to maintain a
gigantic aliases files and so all of our users have been instructed to
create a .forward file to indicate where they would actually like to receive
their mail.  A problem arises if a user's home directory is NFS servered,
the server is down and there is no alias in /etc/aliases the mail will be
delivered locally (i.e. on the mail host).  Unfortunately not to many users
can log onto the mail host and as far as they are concerned their mail has
been lost.

What we feel should really happen is that if a user's home directory is not
accessable then the message should be requeued and delivery attempted at a
later time.  What I need to know is where the requeueing should occur.
Should this happen in the sendmail routine receipient (or perhaps forward)
or should the local delivery agent (/bin/mail) return EX_TEMPFAIL?

Any thoughts or suggestions would be appreciated.  In the mean time I will
go back to reading the sendmail code.

Thanks.
--
Dan Ehrlich - Sr. Systems Programmer - Penn State Computer Science
<ehrlich@cs.psu.edu>/Voice: +1 814 863 1142/FAX: +1 814 865 3176