On Sat, 2004-07-10 at 14:05, Ian Douglas wrote:

Command: DATA
Response: 452 Filesystem error - message not accepted

That error response is from an mta at ntlworld, probably because it has a full/faulty disk.

I am creating the messages using kmail 1.3.2 (part of Debian 3.0) and seem to be able to send test messages to my other ISP account ok.

smtp.ntlworld.com is a load balancer; you (can) end up on a different machine every time you connect. So sending test messages won't reliably reproduce the problem.

You can see this yourself: try "telnet 62.253.162.40 25" a few times, and notice the greeting:

220 mta03-svc.ntlworld.com ESMTP server (InterMail vM.4.01.03.37 201-229-121-137-20020806) ready Sat, 10 Jul 2004 14:15:34 +0100"

keeps having a different mtaXX-svc.ntlworld.com.

The message will stay in the 'outbox' folder until you either fix

the

problem (e.g. a broken address) or remove the message from the

'outbox'

folder.

Note other messages will also be blocked by this message as long

as it

in the 'outbox' folder.

That's KMail-specific behaviour. It sends messages queued in the outbox in-order, so if one message is not accepted by the remote mta, any later messages get stuck. Often a message gets stuck because you mistyped the address, or it looks like spam -- then you need to fix that first before that message (and any subsequent ones) get sent. In this case you can't really fix the problem; just keep retrying.

You could instead deliver your outbound message to a local mta, and let that worry about retrying. That way you don't have to worry about KMail's outbox.

-- Martijn

Ian Douglas alug@k1ngph1cher.com writes:

I am confused. Each time I have tried to send replies to posts on the ALUG list this morning an error box has appeared on my PC saying:

ERROR:

Sending failed:
a SMTP error occurred.
Command: DATA
Response: 452 Filesystem error - message not accepted

The message will stay in the 'outbox' folder until you either fix the
problem (e.g. a broken address) or remove the message from the 'outbox'
folder.

Note other messages will also be blocked by this message as long as it 
in the 'outbox' folder.

The following transport protocol was used:
smtp://smtp.ntlworld.com:25

I have therefore resent my reply. However looking at my inbox it does seem though that this error message is wrong and my replies have indeed reached the ALUG list ok.

Anyone any idea what is going on?

4xx responses indicates a temporary error; the sending software should try again later, rather than report a problem to the user. It's normal for temporary errors to occur from time to time.

Sending software that immediately reports such errors to the user, rather than retrying at a reasonable interval, is broken.

On Sat, 2004-07-10 at 14:05, Ian Douglas wrote:

Command: DATA
Response: 452 Filesystem error - message not accepted

That error response is from an mta at ntlworld, probably because it has a full/faulty disk.

I am creating the messages using kmail 1.3.2 (part of Debian 3.0) and seem to be able to send test messages to my other ISP account ok.

smtp.ntlworld.com is a load balancer; you (can) end up on a different machine every time you connect. So sending test messages won't reliably reproduce the problem.

You can see this yourself: try "telnet 62.253.162.40 25" a few times, and notice the greeting:

220 mta03-svc.ntlworld.com ESMTP server (InterMail vM.4.01.03.37 201-229-121-137-20020806) ready Sat, 10 Jul 2004 14:15:34 +0100"

keeps having a different mtaXX-svc.ntlworld.com.

The message will stay in the 'outbox' folder until you either fix the
problem (e.g. a broken address) or remove the message from the 'outbox'
folder.

Note other messages will also be blocked by this message as long as it 
in the 'outbox' folder.

That's KMail-specific behaviour. It sends messages queued in the outbox in-order, so if one message is not accepted by the remote mta, any later messages get stuck. Often a message gets stuck because you mistyped the address, or it looks like spam -- then you need to fix that first before that message (and any subsequent ones) get sent. In this case you can't really fix the problem; just keep retrying.

You could instead deliver your outbound message to a local mta, and let that worry about retrying. That way you don't have to worry about KMail's outbox.

-- Martijn