timeout calling local se

[fluxent]

(Environment: RedHat Linux recent, Python 2.3.5)

We have a batch processing script that on occasion needs to send out an
email. We have a sendmail running locally.

Sometimes we get a socket timeout on sending that email. Increasing the
timeout to 30sec reduced but did not eliminate it.

It seems to happen more often when sending to some addresses in the UK,
but it's definitely not limited to that.

And, while we sometimes send a number of messages in a short period of
time, (a) it's all single-threaded, and (b) the failure is often but
not always the 1st message in the batch.

Any ideas on what's going on? I don't know much about the
thread/process model of sendmail to have any clue why this is
happening.

[fluxent]

that's
"timeout calling local sendmail"
not
"timeout calling local se"
fl*****@gmail.com wrote:

(Environment: RedHat Linux recent, Python 2.3.5)

We have a batch processing script that on occasion needs to send out an
email. We have a sendmail running locally.

Sometimes we get a socket timeout on sending that email. Increasing the
timeout to 30sec reduced but did not eliminate it.

It seems to happen more often when sending to some addresses in the UK,
but it's definitely not limited to that.

And, while we sometimes send a number of messages in a short period of
time, (a) it's all single-threaded, and (b) the failure is often but
not always the 1st message in the batch.

Any ideas on what's going on? I don't know much about the
thread/process model of sendmail to have any clue why this is
happening.

[Tim Williams]

On 9 Aug 2006 08:22:03 -0700, fl*****@gmail.com <fl*****@gmail.comwrote:

that's
"timeout calling local sendmail"
not
"timeout calling local se"
fl*****@gmail.com wrote:

(Environment: RedHat Linux recent, Python 2.3.5)

We have a batch processing script that on occasion needs to send out an
email. We have a sendmail running locally.

Sometimes we get a socket timeout on sending that email. Increasing the
timeout to 30sec reduced but did not eliminate it.

It seems to happen more often when sending to some addresses in the UK,
but it's definitely not limited to that.

And, while we sometimes send a number of messages in a short period of
time, (a) it's all single-threaded, and (b) the failure is often but
not always the 1st message in the batch.

Any ideas on what's going on? I don't know much about the
thread/process model of sendmail to have any clue why this is
happening.

RFC 1123

http://www.freesoft.org/CIE/RFC/1123/109.htm

I find that a timeout of 120 seconds is the bare minimum. If the
timeout is too short you get a condition where the email is received
succesfully but appears to the sending server to have failed and a
retry may occur - so the recipient gets multiple copies.

HTH :)

[fluxent]

That seems applicable to writing an SMTP server/daemon, but is it
necessary for a script client calling a local SendMail daemon?

Tim Williams wrote:

>

RFC 1123

http://www.freesoft.org/CIE/RFC/1123/109.htm

I find that a timeout of 120 seconds is the bare minimum. If the
timeout is too short you get a condition where the email is received
succesfully but appears to the sending server to have failed and a
retry may occur - so the recipient gets multiple copies.

HTH :)