Re: Transient SMTP errors

[Jack <ostroffjh users sourceforge net>]

Hello all,

On 2017.05.27 13:08, Albrecht Dreß wrote:
> Am 27.05.17 18:48 schrieb(en) Peter Bloomfield:
> > With my AT&T/Yahoo server, I more often get errors like "connection  
> > lost", or "transient error" with something about "internal server  
> > error". As far as I know, these also require no action except  
> > resending,
Yahoo seems to be notoriously bad, especially for email service they  
provide for other ISPs, which ends up meaning it seems to be incredibly  
difficult to get any actual technical support.  They provide POP3,  
IMAP, and SMTP, but they seem to frequently end up telling you to use  
the web mail interface.  Anything which helps avoid that is a good  
thing in my view.

> This is at least what RFC 5321, Sect. 4.2.1. says...

> BTW, now that everything runs in background, I think I should adjust  
> the timeouts according to RFC 5321, Sect. 4.5.3.2., which may also  
> ease your issues.
> > but currently I first have to clear the flag.
> >
> > The attached patch clears the flags with these two types of error.  
> > Does that look reasonable? Is there a better way to use the new  
> > error-handling code? All feedback welcome!
I'm happy with the ability to (if I can remember) use Ctl-T without  
having to clear the flag first.

> I think this is a *really* useful change!  I do not have these issues  
> (my ISP is bad, but apparently not /that/ bad...), but the use case  
> you describe makes sense.
I really believe the issue is related to Yahoo providing the email  
service for the ISP, so the problem is not really the ISP itself.

> The next step would now be an automatic re-send of the queue, as  
> requested by user John Jack Doe, probably with an option to disable  
> it if the user prefers to control it manually.
If this is done, is there, or could there be a pop-up (once per batch  
send attempt, not per message) saying that sending failed and Balsa  
will continue to try (for a set number of times?  for a set period of  
time?  other limits?) to send.  As has been mentioned in other replies  
(unless it's just my imagination :-) it would be good to be able to  
stop the attmepts, or even prevent them by a configuration setting.   
Per Peter's mention - if you cancel the resends due to the user  
creating new outgoing messages, when those are sent, would it be  
reasonable to also retry the stuck message(s)?
> Cheers,
> Albrecht.

Jack