A simple question

[Glenn Steen]

On 13/06/07, Alexandros Fragkiadakis <alfrag at econ.soc.uoc.gr> wrote:
> hi,
>
> when postfix tries to send an email to a remote smtp server and if this
> server is not online, postfix defers the mail. How long does it try to
> communicate with that remote server?
>
> Thanks.

This question is very far OT on this list, should be on the postfix one;-).

How _long_? What do you mean? How many times? How much time? Depends
on your setup/timeouts entirely. Do
postconf|egrep "^smtp_"|grep timeout
... to see some relevant ones.
I seem to timeout after 30 seconds (the default), you might have
something entirely different:). This excerpt from "man 5 postconf"
might shed some more light on how this works:
-------
smtp_connect_timeout (default: 30s)
       The SMTP client time limit for completing a  TCP  connection,  or  zero
       (use the operating system built-in time limit).

       When  no  connection  can  be made within the deadline, the SMTP client
       tries the next address on the mail exchanger list. Specify 0 to disable
       the time limit (i.e. use whatever timeout is implemented by the operat-
       ing system).

       Time units: s (seconds), m (minutes), h (hours), d (days),  w  (weeks).
       The default time unit is s (seconds).
-------

Cheers
-- 
-- Glenn
email: glenn < dot > steen < at > gmail < dot > com
work: glenn < dot > steen < at > ap1 < dot > se