That's what I thought they were, which is why I was confused by the

softbounces I got.

SOME of them were the non-permanent (like 4.4.6 errors), but I also got

a bunch in the 5.x.x range.

Here are more examples that are in that 5.x.x range:

SOFTBOUNCE [log in to unmask] 5.1.0 Unspecified; unknown or unusual error

code 

SOFTBOUNCE [log in to unmask] 5.6.1 554 5.6.1 Body type not supported by

Remote Host 



The unknown user errors are strange:

SOFTBOUNCE [log in to unmask] 5.0.0 550 5.1.1 <[log in to unmask]>... User unknown 

SOFTBOUNCE [log in to unmask] 5.0.0 550 5.1.1 <[log in to unmask]>... User unknown 



BOUNCE [log in to unmask] 5.1.1 Mailer mail02.COLOHFA.ORG said: "550

5.1.1 User unknown" 



Could it be that some mail servers are responding with a non-standard

response which the listserv interprets as NOT being fatal errors?

Thanks,

Jim



-----Original Message-----

From: LISTSERV site administrators' forum

[mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Valdis Kletnieks

Sent: Monday, April 10, 2006 4:00 PM

To: [log in to unmask]

Subject: Re: BOUNCE vs. SOFTBOUNCE??





On Mon, 10 Apr 2006 15:40:44 EDT, "Gartner, James" said:

> Folks,

> What is the difference between a BOUNCE, and a SOFTBOUNCE in a bounce 

> report?? For example:

> 20060406103345 BOUNCE [log in to unmask] 5.1.1 Mailer vaemail2.abc.com

> said:            "550 5.1.1 <[log in to unmask]>... User unknown"

> 20060406103626 SOFTBOUNCE [log in to unmask] 5.3.0 553 5.3.0

> <[log in to unmask]>... Unknown user - sorry. 



A BOUNCE is, in SMTP parlance, the response from a "permanently failed"

attempt that will in all likelyhood *not* succeed until a human takes

manual intervention (for instance, a "no such user" error, end user

mailbox full, or a permanent permissions issue on a mailbox).



A 'Soft Bounce' is a *temporary* failure that has a high chance of

succeeding if retried - network outages, full spool disks on the inbound

receiving area, excessive mail server load, and so on...



Having said that, I'm not clear why your example got flagged as a

'softbounce' - usually failures have 5XX and 5.y.z errors, while temp

fails have 4XX and 4.y.z codes (in fact, the 4/5 distinction is defined

as how to tell one from the other).



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