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ISSUE
A sender receives a failure or warning message from Postini server similar to the following:
>>>>>
This is the Postfix program at host exprod5mo4.postini.com.
I'm sorry to have to inform you that the message returned
below could not be delivered to one or more destinations.
For further assistance, please send mail to
If you do so, please include this problem report. You can
delete your own text from the message returned below.
The Postfix program
<<<<<
Or, user is receiving duplicate copies of an email and analysis of the headers from a few copies of the email shows that a Postini server is resending it.
RESOLUTION
Postini has two built-in features designed to prevent extended delays and duplicate copies of messages:
1) Acceptance of a message for later delivery
2) Automatic deletion of duplicate messages
The first case occurs when transfer of a message is taking too long to complete. To avoid problems with the sending mail server attempting to retransmit the message, Postini accepts the message and redirects it to a separate mail server. This server holds the message in its queue and attempts to deliver it to the receiving server at a later time. This server runs a standard Postfix configuration, so the sender may receive warning notifications if the message remains undelivered for an extended period of time. If the message is never successfully delivered and expires from the queue, a final failure (bounce) notification will be sent to the sender. In rare cases, this server can itself get the message stuck in its queue, causing duplicates to be sent to the recipient. If this occurs, contact Postini Customer Care to have the message purged from the queue.
The second case occurs when a message was successfully delivered but the sending server disconnected before receiving the acknowledgment and therefore retries delivery. Postini keeps a fingerprint of the message in memory and if the message is seen again, it accepts the message and automatically deletes it.
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