[5364] in Athena Bugs
Re: [MAILER-DAEMON@MIT.EDU: Returned mail: Service unavailable]
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Richard Basch)
Sat Jun 30 12:40:14 1990
Date: Sat, 30 Jun 90 12:39:54 -0400
To: "Jonathan I. Kamens" <jik@PIT-MANAGER.MIT.EDU>
Cc: bugs@ATHENA.MIT.EDU
In-Reply-To: Jonathan I. Kamens's message of Thu, 28 Jun 90 19:02:58 -0400,
From: Richard Basch <probe@MIT.EDU>
----- Forwarded message
Date: Thu, 28 Jun 90 18:27:09 EDT
From: Mail Delivery Subsystem <MAILER-DAEMON@ATHENA.MIT.EDU>
Subject: Returned mail: Service unavailable
To: <jik@pit-manager.MIT.EDU>
----- Transcript of session follows -----
pop: unable to open /usr/spool/pop/wdc
554 <wdc@E40-PO.LOCAL>,<tytso@E40-PO.LOCAL>,<swick@E40-PO.LOCAL>,<shanzer@E40-PO.LOCAL>,<roman@E40-PO.LOCAL>,<rar@E40-PO.LOCAL>,<probe@E40-PO.LOCAL>,<nessus@E40-PO.LOCAL>,<monkey@E40-PO.LOCAL>,<mar@E40-PO.LOCAL>,<mafetter@E40-PO.LOCAL>,<lavin@E40-PO.LOCAL>,<kerr@E40-PO.LOCAL>,<jstewart@E40-PO.LOCAL>,<jon@E40-PO.LOCAL>,<jis@E40-PO.LOCAL>,<jfc@E40-PO.LOCAL>,<hwang@E40-PO.LOCAL>,<henry@E40-PO.LOCAL>,<garybean@E40-PO.LOCAL>,<epeisach@E40-PO.LOCAL>,<ellis@E40-PO.LOCAL>,<dyer@E40-PO.LOCAL>,<champine@E40-PO.LOCAL>,<carlos@E40-PO.LOCAL>... Service unavailable
----- Unsent message follows -----
This means that it was not delivered to "wdc"...
"sendmail" will print the rest of the recipients, even though it may
have delivered the message to them. Essentially, it is going down the
recipient list, attempting to deliver the message and prints the buffer
starting at the failed recipient, thus showing you all the other people.
So, if you see such a message, just try forwarding to the person who's
mailbox was not accessible, not to everyone; I have gotten three
messages on the subject at this point.
Admittedly, "sendmail" should only show the failed recipient, not the
entire buffer starting at the failed recipient. However, some errors
are for the entire list, such as a host timeout. So, this problem may
not be possible to fix.
"sendmail" sorts the recipients into queues and attempts to connect to
the various hosts and send one message to the list of people. However,
if an error is encountered, the message is sent back to the sending
mailer along with the error code. The original recipient list that was
given to the host is then printed for the sender's information, but this
is quite often misleading if it was not delivered to only one person.
-Richard
