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From: michaud@decvax.dec.com (Jeff Michaud)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.ultrix
Subject: Re: Mail11v3's use of DECnet information ?
Message-ID: <8929@shlump.nac.dec.com>
Date: 5 Mar 90 22:35:50 GMT
References: <1612@cernvax.UUCP>
Sender: news@shlump.nac.dec.com
Organization: DEC
Lines: 30

> When mail11v3 tries to send a VMSmail message to a DECnet-VAX node, where
> (Deferred: Remote MAIL object at node not responding)
> .........
> When I tried to use mail11v3 again to mail to the node it also existed
> (Deferred: Remote node node unreachable)

	The error text means exactly what it says.  It means that
	the remote node acknowleged our connect request for the
	mail-11 object (#27), but that it never accepted the
	connection, and the outgoing connection timer expired.  Ie.

	    Connect request    =>
	                       <=    Connect Ack
	                       <=    Connect Confirm (or Disconnect Init)

	We never got the last message.  both errors, "object not
	responding" and "node unreachable" are non-fatal conditions.
	sendmail will continue to retry until it finally gives up
	after a time (default 3 days), or a fatal error is detected
	by mail11v3 (like "remote node is unknown", "no such user at
	remote node", ....).

	When nodes are in a state of flux (ie. rebooting, shuting
	down, etc...) error conditions like "object not responding"
	are common.

/--------------------------------------------------------------\
|Jeff Michaud    michaud@decwrl.dec.com  michaud@decvax.dec.com|
|DECnet-ULTRIX   #include <standard/disclaimer.h>              |
\--------------------------------------------------------------/