Author Topic: Different Types of Bounces (Read 4396 times)

Denver Dave · October 02, 2008, 09:31:52 pm

We seem to be having different types of bounces. I'm pretty sure that I've never managed to get our IMAP2SOAP working , thus my interest in PHP processing of bounces. However ....

We seem to have 53 bounces recorded as bounces in our last mailing (mailing report) (similar has occurred in at least some previous mailings). We also have 65 or so bounces in our return mailbox. What is interesting is that none of the bounces listed in our mailing report are also in the mailbox as returns.

Previously, when I've noticed bounces recorded in the mailing report, the contact record was imported and the actual structure of the email address was incorrect so the email would never have worked and it was flagged as a bounce in the bounce report.

The bounces now in the bounce report look OK as far as syntax. I called one person that I knew and he said the email recorded as a bounce in the bounce report had been discontinued.

Could it be that some email addresses can be tested before they go out and bounce immediately and others have to be returned? None of these bounces showed up as on-holds.

I don't think our IMAP2SOAP is working, but how would I know - what should I observe if it was working?

Thanks.

Piotr Szotkowski · October 03, 2008, 12:21:58 am

Quote from: Denver Dave on October 02, 2008, 09:31:52 pm

We seem to have 53 bounces recorded as bounces in our last mailing (mailing report) (similar has occurred in at least some previous mailings). We also have 65 or so bounces in our return mailbox. What is interesting is that none of the bounces listed in our mailing report are also in the mailbox as returns.

[…]

I called one person that I knew and he said the email recorded as a bounce in the bounce report had been discontinued.

Could it be that some email addresses can be tested before they go out and bounce immediately and others have to be returned?

This is exactly the case. There are two kinds of bounces – ‘hard bounces’, which happen during the initial SMTP session (when your mailing is being sent), and ‘soft bounces’, which are just regular emails sent back to the address specified in the Return-Path (or Reply-To) header.

What you’re observing in your CiviCRM are the ‘hard bounces’ – these are seen by CiviCRM as errors when it tries to send the initial emails, so it can record them outright. (They also don’t appear in your mailbox, as they aren’t separate emails sent in separate SMTP transactions.)

Contrary, what you see in the mailbox are the ‘soft bounces’ – the initial SMTP transaction went ok, so CiviCRM believes it sent the particular email successfully; only after accepting the email the server on the other side replied (with a separate email) that something went wrong.

Quote from: Denver Dave on October 02, 2008, 09:31:52 pm

I don't think our IMAP2SOAP is working, but how would I know - what should I observe if it was working?

Your CiviCRM install should also start registering the ‘soft bounces’ (the ones you find in your mailbox).

fen · October 03, 2008, 05:51:00 am

Quote from: Denver Dave on October 02, 2008, 09:31:52 pm

I don't think our IMAP2SOAP is working, but how would I know - what should I observe if it was working?

imap2soap.pl normally runs as a 'cron' job - "type crontab -l" and you should see lines like:

Code: [Select]

MAILTO=yourname@youremail.com
./bin/imap2soap.pl -q -w 1 -l 5 -L 3 ./civicrm/imap2soap.conf

(paths and options may be different depending on your install locations and system configuration). Use "crontab -e" to edit your crontab with your default ${EDITOR}.

You can test imap2soap.pl by running it manually without the options, e.g.,

Code: [Select]

./bin/imap2soap.pl ./civicrm/imap2soap.conf

and you should see lines similar to these:

Code: [Select]

imap2soap: Initializing http://yourdomain.com/sites/default/modules/civicrm/extern/soap.php
imap2soap: Initialization complete
imap2soap: Script completed.

(perhaps with some mail processing going on in-between).

A useful check to see that imap2soap can find your IMAP mailboxes is to run the (poorly named) "imap2soapJunk.pl" command:

Code: [Select]

./bin/imap2soapJunk.pl ./civicrm/imap2soap.conf

This should connect to your IMAP server and show the status of your mailboxes. There are various options - use 'q' to quit from the command loop.

I plan to combine the more useful parts of imap2soapJunk.pl into imap2soap.pl at which point I'll document it all better, too.

Hope this helps!
=Fen

ctarascio · October 03, 2008, 06:14:20 am

Denver Dave,
This post may be of interest to you: http://forum.civicrm.org/index.php?topic=4167.new;topicseen#new. We never followed up on tracing the headers as Piotr suggested, but we will do so after we upgrade to 2.1.

Cynthia

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Author Topic: Different Types of Bounces (Read 4396 times)

Denver Dave

Different Types of Bounces

Piotr Szotkowski

Re: Different Types of Bounces

fen

Re: Different Types of Bounces

ctarascio

Re: Different Types of Bounces