Re: procmail slow email delivery

[Shyamal Prasad <shyamal.prasad@sbcglobal.net>]

    "Richard" == Richard Otte <otte@ucsc.edu> writes:

    Richard> Hi, I ran eximconfig and created a new
    Richard> /etc/exim/exim.conf file.  With this things are working,
    Richard> in that mail is not handled twice by exim, and there is
    Richard> no long delay before I get my email.  A few weeks ago I
    Richard> did a dist-upgade to testing, and now think that I should
    Richard> have run eximconfig then.  

Nyah. You should not have to run eximconfig but as many times as you
need to until it works. dist-upgrade should not require a re-run. 

    Richard> I'm still a bit puzzled: when I look at my email in Mutt
    Richard> I have a "F" next to each message, which I believe means
    Richard> that it was sent by me.  That is a very trivial
    Richard> inconvenience, but I'm curious as to why it happens.  For
    Richard> a typical message the exim log says:

    Richard> 18AJG4-0003VB-00 => |/usr/bin/procmail -t
    Richard> (ric@otte.ucsc.edu) <ric@otte> D=userforward

This is because you are running procmail via your .forward file. The
simple solution is: don't. Your exim.conf should, by default, include
a procmail delivery mechanism that detects and uses a .procmailrc file
per user.

    Richard> I also notice a very large number of lines like the
    Richard> following in the exim log file:

    Richard> 2002-11-08 16:08:02 17MrQy-0001U2-00 Message is frozen
    Richard> 2002-11-08 16:08:02 17MrSX-0001fd-00 Message is frozen
    Richard> 2002-11-08 16:08:02 17NaPJ-0007oV-00 Message is frozen
    Richard> 2002-11-08 16:08:02 End queue run: pid=12870

    Richard> It looks to me as if there are a lot more 'Message is
    Richard> frozen' logs than before.  But I believe the mail is
    Richard> being delivered (or at least some of it is being
    Richard> delivered), and I'm wondering why I'm getting those
    Richard> messages.  Is there an easy way to check to see if any
    Richard> messages are frozen and never thawed or delivered?

Frozen messsages are usually the result of undeliverable mail that
cannot be returned to sender. It usually indicates a misconfiguration,
because it means exim really could not send it anyplace at all.

You can monitor things with eximon, which is an X application. Or you
can use commands like 'exim -bp' to list them, and things like 'exim
-Mrm <id>' to remove them and so on. The command switches are not,
IMHO, very intuitive. You will have to read the manual.

Cheers!
Shyamal