Missing posts again ??

William Case billlinux at rogers.com
Wed Dec 23 09:52:27 UTC 2009


Thanks Patrick;

On Wed, 2009-12-23 at 08:55 +0000, Patrick O'Callaghan wrote:
> On Tue, 2009-12-22 at 22:02 -0500, William Case wrote:
> > On Tue, 2009-12-22 at 21:50 -0500, William Case wrote:
> > > Hi;
> > > 
> > 
> > > 
> > > **  Just now, as I was typing this at 9:41 pm EST, I received 61
> > > fedora-list posts.  Six or seven of the posts are current.  The rest are
> > > marked yesterday or two days ago and include all the posts I was looking
> > > for.
> > > 
> > > It doesn't make sense.
> > 
> > It really doesn't make sense, this last post turned around and was sent
> > back to me in 15 minutes.  As well, when I checked closer, I am still
> > missing a couple (a few) posts from Sunday and maybe Saturday.
> 
> Bill, it may seem counterintuitive but it's perfectly legitimate for
> mail to arrive out of order. There are no guarantees, even for the
> ordering of messages sent between the same two addresses.
> 

I do understand how email works and how it is forwarded from site to
site sometimes taking a circuitous route. I am not expecting that it
should follow in exact order.

However, I belong to 11 mailing lists.  Granted, none of the others has
as much traffic as the fedora-list but none of them ever get blocked for
two or three days like the fedora-list.  And the instances of
blockage/delay with fedora-list seems random.  I can go several months
with no problem.

The blockage seems to be at the fedora-list or why else would I receive
a block of 61 posts, some of the posts current and some two or three
days old.  It seems that this weekend fedora-list had about 200
messages.  I received about 100 in the normal fashion throughout the
weekend (i.e. in batches of 1-7 messages), then a block of 61 and then
later an additional block of 35 late yesterday.

The problem with these delays is not that I have email that is so
important. It is that once I develop a feeling that I cannot trust the
orderly exchange of mail, I find myself continually having to check the
archive to see if my post arrived or if there has been a response.  

Also, I don't live in a remote area where I might expect physical
interruptions or primitive service conditions.  Gawd knows, I pay enough
monthly to my local IP to expect good service.

> That said, it's certainly not *usual*, so something seems to be going
> on, but knowing exactly what means tracing the mail's path via its
> headers. Take a look at the detailed header info of some delayed
> messages (especially the timestamps) and you'll probably be able to
> identify where the blockage is occurring.


I tried that earlier and then the problem self-corrected.  I will try
again to trace the delay.  Now that I have confirmation this may also be
happening to other people, the effort might be worthwhile.


-- 
Regards Bill
Fedora 12, Gnome 2.28
Evo.2.28, Emacs 23.1.1




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