Greetings,
 
Susan E. King ([log in to unmask]) writes
 
>Does anyone have a document which explains the basic error messages one can
>receive.
>
>ie.. transient failure
 
This indicate a failure to deliver the message to a recipient for 'whatever'
reason.  It could be that the network/machine went down while the delivery was
happening, or some other reason.  Normally, another attempt to deliver the
message will follow.
 
>ie.. too many hops
 
This means that in trying to deliver the message to it's destination, mail went
through too many machines.  Most mailers have a hop count upper limit and bounce
mail when this limit is reached.  It prevents mail from looping forever due to
mailer misconfiguration or user forwards.
 
>ie.. unknown user
 
This means exactly what it says.  The mailer where the destination address
points to does not know about the user in question, and returns the "user
unknown" code.
 
This is just of the top of my head, but I believe that these codes are
documented in RFCs (RFC821/822).
 
 
+-----------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| Acacio (Casey) Carvalho         | e-mail: [log in to unmask]                    |
| VMS Technical Support           | alternate e-mail: [log in to unmask] |
| Micro & VMS Support, CCIS       |                                           |
| York University,  T103 Steacie  |                                           |
| North York, Ontario             | Tel.#: (416) 736-5257 x 22686    or       |
| Canada     M3J 1P3              |        (416) 736-2100 x 22686             |
+-----------------------------------------------------------------------------+