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I use Node.js script to process incoming emails and pipe them from Postfix via netcat in mailbox_command (namely: nc 127.0.0.1 3002). Node is listening on port 3002 and calls socket.destroy() once email is processed.

However, it seems that postfix does not recognize that command succeeded and retries. Well, I'm not sure that this is postfix who causes the issue, it's just a suggestion. Some facts:

  1. Socket IS closed after the email is processed. Otherwise, after 12 incoming messages Node warns about possible memory leak. So I assume that netcat exits thus does not cause this issue.
  2. If I spawn Node process with mailbox_command (consuming stdin instead of socket) which then exits with code 0 postfix does not try to call mailbox_command once again.
  3. If I use -q option for netcat (e.g. nc -q 1 127.0.0.1 3002) node does not receive anything

Once the email is processed I log a timestamp. This is log for a single email:

socket destroyed at: Fri Mar 28 2014 05:07:25 GMT-0400 (EDT)

socket destroyed at: Fri Mar 28 2014 05:11:25 GMT-0400 (EDT) socket destroyed at: Fri Mar 28 2014 05:11:25 GMT-0400 (EDT)

socket destroyed at: Fri Mar 28 2014 05:18:35 GMT-0400 (EDT) socket destroyed at: Fri Mar 28 2014 05:18:35 GMT-0400 (EDT) socket destroyed at: Fri Mar 28 2014 05:18:35 GMT-0400 (EDT)

socket destroyed at: Fri Mar 28 2014 05:18:51 GMT-0400 (EDT) socket destroyed at: Fri Mar 28 2014 05:18:51 GMT-0400 (EDT) socket destroyed at: Fri Mar 28 2014 05:18:51 GMT-0400 (EDT) socket destroyed at: Fri Mar 28 2014 05:18:51 GMT-0400 (EDT)

Note highlighted time. As you can see, it retries n+1 times, but there's no fixed retry timeout.

Please, help me fix this.

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Eugene Kostrikov
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  • Old but interesting question, did you have any solution/workaround to this problem? I'm confused with this statement *If I spawn Node process with mailbox_command (consuming stdin instead of socket)*, can you explain it? – masegaloeh Oct 13 '14 at 02:26
  • Yeah, this basically means to start single node process per single received email (which is kinda weird). Just tried different options trying to resolve this. Actual "workaround" was quite radical. I just redirected incoming email to another server and put a node server to listen on SMTP port here. The only thing it was responsible for - receive whatever comes and put formatted message to the event bus. – Eugene Kostrikov Oct 13 '14 at 15:21
  • I'm trying to reproduce your case and I'm fails to do so. Postfix successfully send message to nodejs via `nc` and it doesn't retry like your case. The script was so simple as it just console.log the stdin. Here the test script I used http://pastebin.com/m64NGJBF – masegaloeh Jan 05 '15 at 13:36

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