Suspended user - email problem

In the weekend of 16/may/2009 we have had a big server migration, to make an exact backup we suspend the users, make a backup, then restore and unsuspend them. But I have noticed this problem:

When I user is suspended he can't receive any email, this is normal because he is suspended. But a big problem is that the email is rejected instead of putted in the queue, so when the user is unsuspended the email received while he was suspended are lost.

This is from the exim/mainlog file

2009-05-16 18:56:01 H=mailrelay007.isp.belgacom.be [195.238.6.173] F=<[email protected]> rejected RCPT <[email protected]>: Unrouteable address
2009-05-16 18:56:02 H=mailrelay007.isp.belgacom.be [195.238.6.173] incomplete transaction (RSET) from <[email protected]>

I think it would be better to queue the emails until the user is unsuspended. I also though to maybe make 2 suspension-states "suspend" and "disable / hard suspend". In "suspend"-mode the email are queued, in "disable"-mode they are rejected.

How does other people think about this problem?

Kind regards,
Maarten

It would have to be queued on the sending server not the receiving server since you are moving the accounts. So I believe you would have to shut down exim so that the sending server believes it is a temporary problem and queue the mail themselves. They will try again later and hopefully you will have already move the accounts.

Great answer Floyd. We always turn off most services on the old server while we move to the new server.

Jeff

And what do you do when you only want to move 1 or some accounts? Also shut down exim? But then all other accounts will neither recieve mails.

And what with suspended user? All the emails send to suspended user is just thrown away, without error message.

Kind regards,
Maarten Morent

Well, I can give you an example about this thing.

Let's say you didn't payed the Phone bill. You got disconnected (suspended on our case). Then somebody is trying to reach you via telephone, and if I am correct you are saying that even if you are disconnected (suspended) the other person should still listed to upgoing rings ? Or it's better to just let it know that you are disconnected so he should stop calling you.

This is the same thing. Emails are rejected because nobody knows when the account will be unsuspended. Maybe it wont be.

Their account shouldnt be associated with an email that is being hosted on the machine. You should always use an external email address.

mmgenius said:

And what do you do when you only want to move 1 or some accounts? Also shut down exim? But then all other accounts will neither recieve mails.

Click to expand...

That depends on how many accounts we're moving. If it's going to be only five minutes or so we'd block incoming port 25 for the entire server. Otherwise we could (we've never had to do it) make a simple change to exim.conf so mail for one domain will be temporarily refused. I've not looked into it because we've never had to do it, but I suppose it's possible. See Floyd's message above. Should DirectAdmin have an option in the suspend command to permanently or temporarily refuse email? I'm not sure if that would be workable; you sometimes don't know when you do a suspension.

And what with suspended user? All the emails send to suspended user is just thrown away, without error message.

Click to expand...

I don't believe that's true. I believe when a user is suspended the mail is refused, so it's up to the sending server to manage it, which it has a responsiblity to do, according to the RFCs.

Another way to handle the issue is to manually backup/move/restore emails in the new subdirectlory manually after the user is restored on the new server.

Jeff