On Mon, 5 Jun 1995 14:27:27 EST "A. Ralph Papakhian"
<[log in to unmask]> said:
>INFO KEYWORDS (Appendix B of the complete manual) discusses
>Auto-Delete=Full-Auto and Auto-Delete=Manual but not
>Auto-Delete=Semi-Auto, which just happens to be the default in most
>cases. (!)
In Full-Auto mode, LISTSERV never forwards delivery errors that are in a
format it understands, except (if DELAY(0) is in effect) as justification
for having kicked off a user. In Semi-Auto mode, it forwards errors it
was not able to process because it could not find a matching user.
>The Auto-Delete=Delay(n) option is completely incomprehensible to me.
>What is LISTSERV doing, exactly? If the Delay is set to 4, does deletion
>occur only if errors are recorded on days 1, 2, 3, and 4? Or only if
>errors occur on days 1 and 4?
LISTSERV only receives negative acknowledgements (bounces) and they
arrive when they please. LISTSERV has no way to know that a problem has
been solved except by noting that bounces no longer *seem* to be coming
in, which could also be because they are being buffered somewhere. If the
delay is set to 4 LISTSERV will allow the problem to remain present (ie
reported) for 4 days before it takes action. It doesn't matter if it was
reported every day or not and in fact this kind of temporary permanent
errors are often buffered at a broken machine.
>"For instance, if Delay(7) and a subscriber's mail regularly bounces on
>the weekend, LISTSERV will wait until [t]he next weekend to decide
>whether or not to delete him, at which point the subscriber will bounce
>mail again and start the process all over. The bottom line is that
>LISTSERV might as well have gone ahead and deleted the subscriber as
>soon as the first bounce occurred."
>[from Appendix B of List Owner's Manual (c)1995 by L-Soft international,
>Inc. copied here without permission]
>
>"Start the process over" and "Might as well have gone ahead and deleted
>the subscriber" seem to me to be contradictory. Or...?
If you have an account that is broken every weekend and you tell LISTSERV
to wait 7 days before kicking you out, you will have wasted your time
because the account will break on Sat, LISTSERV will wait 7 days, and on
the next Sat LISTSERV will see that the account is still broken and kick
you out. The account will have been repaired Mon-Fri but as noted
LISTSERV has no way to know that. Increasing the delay from 4 to 7 will
not have provided any additional leniency. This phenomenon is due to the
fact that most false permanent errors occur during weekends on systems
that aren't capable of running on auto-pilot.
The executive summary is that the default option provides best results in
most cases and probably doesn't have to be changed.
Eric
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