qmail: This message is looping: it already has my Delivered-To line
Posted by: major in Mail, PleskI stumbled upon this peculiar bounce message recently while working on a server:
Hi. This is the qmail-send program at yourmailserver.com.
I'm afraid I wasn't able to deliver your message to the following addresses.
This is a permanent error; I've given up. Sorry it didn't work out.
<user1@domain.com>:
This message is looping: it already has my Delivered-To line. (#5.4.6)
--- Below this line is a copy of the message.
Return-Path:
Received: (qmail 14418 invoked by uid 110); 9 Jan 2008 13:04:33 -0600
Delivered-To: 54-user2@domain.com
Received: (qmail 14411 invoked by uid 110); 9 Jan 2008 13:04:33 -0600
Delivered-To: 53-user1@domain.com
Received: (qmail 14404 invoked from network); 9 Jan 2008 13:04:33 -0600
Received: from otherdomain.com (HELO otherdomain.com) (11.22.33.44)
by yourmailserver.com with SMTP; 9 Jan 2008 13:04:33 -0600
Basically, this is qmail’s way of letting you know that your e-mails are stuck in a mail loop. One e-mail user is redirecting to another e-mail user, and that e-mail user is redirecting back to the first one. If q-mail already has a delivered to line which matches one that it already added, it bounces the e-mail and halts delivery.
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We had this problem too, where both sender and receiver where on the same server (same domain) and wrongly forwarded. The bounced message bounced back, and this kept going back and forth. Kept us for a while to find this problem.
The problem was that one alias forwarded to a mailbox and to another alias which forwarded to another mailbox and an external address.
(like info -> box1, name; and name -> box2, external@domain.com)
I noticed in another setup that exim did handle that situation without any troubles.