Domain example.com has exceeded the max defers and failures per hour (5/5 (100%)) allowed. Message discarded. DT=0.000s
I'm trying to understand this error better as it relates to an account on our server sending mail. Do I understand that this error was ultimately generated by the sending server and not the recipient server? It's hard for me to tell because, for this account, it's only one recipient that is getting this error... a gmail.com address. All other emails seem to be sending fine. But in the end, the gmail.com address did not accept the message for some unknown reason despite a certain number of retries. Is that correct? Here is a redacted screen shot of the message info.
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Hey there! It looks like there's two things happening with this message. For the first thing, you or correct that *some* type of failure on the recipient end triggers this message, and then the Exim mailserver records that entry and doesn't retry sending the message again for a period of time. If you think that's an error, or if you have resolved the issue on the recipient end (or something odd was happening like a bad DNS lookup that you were able to fix) you can clear the Exim retry database with the following commands: /usr/sbin/exim_tidydb -t 1d /var/spool/exim retry > /dev/null /usr/sbin/exim_tidydb -t 1d /var/spool/exim reject > /dev/null /usr/sbin/exim_tidydb -t 1d /var/spool/exim wait-remote_smtp > /dev/null
The second thing that is happening is that the user is hitting the "max defers and failures" per hour limit, which is configured in WHM >> Tweak Settings, so the server isn't letting the account send any other messages. Let me know if that helps!0 -
Thanks, that makes sense. So theoretically what can happen is the limit is reached because of failing to send to account@example1.com, then the WHM account attempts to send an email that would normally succeed to account@example2.com... but that one never sends. Is that correct? Then also is it possible that 1 attempt to send an email triggers a limit (of 5) due to failed resend attempts? 0 -
Exactly correct on the first part - however, the Exim system is smart enough where automated retries of the same message don't count toward the max deferred/failed number. 0 -
Thansk! And lastly, if the limit is hit and it goes to send another email (which will not send)... will that email be reattempted later? Is that what "deferred" means in this case? 0 -
That's exactly correct :D 0 -
The limit is not configurable per account or package? Only server-wide? 0 -
You can configure the "Maximum percentage of failed or deferred messages a domain may send per hour" in a package if you'd like: -1 -
Changing that doesn't change the absolute number of failed messages an account can send, only the percentage of it's total mail? I'm not totally sure how those two settings work together. It seems like the percentage would only come into play if the account sends less than 5 emails in whatever time period it uses (based on the defaults of 5 and 100%). So if either of those limits are hit in the time period, it triggers the same result? So if an account is already at 100% it can't be raised higher. So the only way to raise the limit for an account is to raise the global absolute limit... as far as I can tell. 0 -
That's correct. There is no per-account limit, so adjusting this would change it for all domains on the system. 0
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