N line
Number of times tried V8.7 and later
Each time delivery is attempted for a message, the
number stored in its qf
file’s N
line is incremented by one. This
number always begins at zero.
When delivering many messages to a single host, sendmail remembers failures. If one message fails to make it all the way through an SMTP dialog, all the following messages to that same host will be deferred (not attempted during the current queue run). For those deferred messages, the number of tries is correctly incremented as though the delivery was actually attempted.
The value in this N
line is used to determine whether the delay of the
MinQueueAge
option (MinQueueAge on page 1057)
should be triggered. This value, when zero, can also
be used to enable a special first-time connection
timeout (Timeout.iconnect (V8.8 and later)
on page 1103).
Get sendmail, 4th Edition now with the O’Reilly learning platform.
O’Reilly members experience books, live events, courses curated by job role, and more from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers.