Bug#313422: exim4-daemon-heavy: Bounces mail when network is down

[John Goerzen]

Package: exim4-daemon-heavy
Version: 4.50-4
Severity: normal

I would expect a MTA to simply queue mail that it tries to send when the
network is down (or packet loss is high).  However, exim4 bounces it,
with an unhelpful "Unrouteable address" message.  (These are messages
being sent off-site).  The exim4 mainlog doesn't have any other useful
information, either.

Even stranger: sometimes, it will log things like:

R=dnslookup T=remote_smtp defer (110): Connection timed out

and behave as desired.

I can't figure out why it doesn't do that all the time.

Any hints would be appreciated.

-- Package-specific info:
Exim version 4.50 #1 built 02-Mar-2005 07:42:40
Copyright (c) University of Cambridge 2004
Berkeley DB: Sleepycat Software: Berkeley DB 4.2.52: (December  3, 2003)
Support for: iconv() IPv6 PAM Perl GnuTLS Content_Scanning Old_Demime
Lookups: lsearch wildlsearch nwildlsearch iplsearch cdb dbm dbmnz dnsdb dsearch ldap ldapdn ldapm mysql nis nis0 passwd pgsql
Authenticators: cram_md5 cyrus_sasl plaintext spa
Routers: accept dnslookup ipliteral iplookup manualroute queryprogram redirect
Transports: appendfile/maildir/mailstore/mbx autoreply lmtp pipe smtp
Fixed never_users: 0
Configuration file is /var/lib/exim4/config.autogenerated

-- System Information:
Debian Release: 3.1
  APT prefers testing
  APT policy: (500, 'testing')
Architecture: i386 (i686)
Kernel: Linux 2.4.26-vs1.27
Locale: LANG=C, LC_CTYPE=C (charmap=ANSI_X3.4-1968)

Versions of packages exim4-daemon-heavy depends on:
ii  exim4-base                  4.50-4       support files for all exim MTA (v4
ii  libc6                       2.3.2.ds1-21 GNU C Library: Shared libraries an
ii  libdb4.2                    4.2.52-18    Berkeley v4.2 Database Libraries [
ii  libgnutls11                 1.0.16-9     GNU TLS library - runtime library
ii  libldap2                    2.1.30-3     OpenLDAP libraries
ii  libmysqlclient10            3.23.56-2    LGPL-licensed client library for M
ii  libpam0g                    0.76-22      Pluggable Authentication Modules l
ii  libpcre3                    4.5-1.1      Perl 5 Compatible Regular Expressi
ii  libperl5.8                  5.8.4-8      Shared Perl library
ii  libpq3                      7.4.7-5      PostgreSQL C client library
ii  libsasl2                    2.1.19-1.5   Authentication abstraction library

-- no debconf information