Bounce message on Over Quota

[lleahu]

Hello,

I upgraded zimbra from 5.0.1 to 5.0.2 yesterday. Since then, the mail queue has been slowly growing with 'Over Quota' messages (I'm up to 17,000) now. I did not have a problem with 'Over Quota' deferred email until after the upgrade.

This asks the following questions:

1. What changed in 5.0.2 to cause all the 'Over Quota' messages to be deferred in the mail queue?

2. How can I configure Zimbra (LMTP listener on port 7025) to issue a '5.x.x' permanent fatal error instead of the '4.x.x' temporary fatal error? I want to configure my system to automatically bounce all 'Over Quota' emails. Is there a better way to do this?

Thanks!
- Lee

[deepblue]

I have the same problem.

Yesterday I upgraded from 4.5.5 to 5.0.2 (NE). This is a system running ~10.000 Accounts. I did not see any significant problems with the queues on the machines in the past.
But today I had ~4000 mails deferred.

All mails have a recipient with a "over quota" account on the zimbra servers.

Why does postfix accept the mails? Should'nt postfix issue a 4.2.2. error to the originating server and not even accept the mail? I have the impression that all mails from remote servers are accepted, handed over to amavis, and when the mail comes back from amavis the postfix daemon issues the "4.2.2 over quota" message - But this is just too late.

What can be done to prevent deferred queues to grow indefinitely?

Regards
Thomas

[lleahu]

When postfix sends the message to Zimbra (LMTP) it gets back a 4.x.x *temporary* fatal error code.

Mail protocol states that all *temporary* (4.x.x) errors should be deferred and all *permanent* (5.x.x) errors should be bounced.

It's unfortunate that Zimbra does not have a detectable way to manage the return codes (i.e. setting a 5.x.x *permanent* fatal error, as opposed to the default).

Postfix has a configuration variable 'maximal_queue_lifetime'. It defaults to 5 days. If a deferred message has been in the queue for longer than this time, it is *then* bounced.

Try changing this value to something smaller like 2 hours (ex. 2h). This should help control the # of over quota messages in your mail queue.

[deepblue]

Originally Posted by lleahu

When postfix sends the message to Zimbra (LMTP) it gets back a 4.x.x *temporary* fatal error code.

...

It's unfortunate that Zimbra does not have a detectable way to manage the return codes (i.e. setting a 5.x.x *permanent* fatal error, as opposed to the default).

...

Try changing this value to something smaller like 2 hours (ex. 2h). This should help control the # of over quota messages in your mail queue.

Hi,

you are perfectly right with that... In my formerly used ZCS 4.5.5 System the LMTP returned a 5.x.x error, when the user was over quota. Now LMTP returns 4.x.x temporary failure which puts the mails in the deferred queue.

I also found no way to configure the return code of LMTP... Could someone from Zimbra please comment on that?
I have now more that 12.000 mails in the deferred queue. I know that I could tweak 'maximal_queue_lifetime'. But this seems to me the 2nd best way to handle the queue.

Regards
Thomas