Re: Interaction of reformail -D with EX_TEMPFAIL

On Sun, Mar 15, 2026 at 03:20:27PM +0000, Julian Gilbey wrote:
> [Resending with minor modifications as I used the wrong From address]
> 
> On Tue, Mar 10, 2026 at 08:13:32PM -0400, Sam Varshavchik wrote:
> > Julian Gilbey writes:
> > [...]
> 
> Hi Sam,
> 
> Thanks for the analysis!
> 
> I didn't show the whole of my .mailfilter file (it's mostly quite
> boring), but it finishes with the line:
> 
> to $DEFAULT
> [...]
> 
> So far, only two invocations of maildrop have failed with the
> unhelpful message:
> 
> /usr/bin/maildrop: Internal error.
> [...]
> 
> I'll continue waiting, and if anything more interesting ensues, I'll
> report back....  Nothing has failed at the "to $DEFAULT" line yet.
> 
> Best wishes,
> 
>    Julian

There have been a few more internal errors, but at long last, the
culprit of my original problem has been located by logging the
maildrop output using a wrapper: I was filtering the message using
xfilter, and on very large messages, the external filter would fail,
causing maildrop to exit with EX_TEMPFAIL.  Thankfully, the message
was then caught earlier and deposited in spool.duplicates, otherwise
it would have continued to fail.

I've now dealt with that, and I shouldn't have any problems going
forwards.

So thanks for the guidance, Sam!  Phew!

   Julian