9.1.1.4 Error Handling

Temporary server failures during this process have to be handled carefully, since when they occur, it is impossible to know whether or not a given domain is local. Basically two outcomes are possible in such a case:

1. Return a temporary (4xx) error to the client telling it to try the address again later.

2. Accept the address but queue it to the reprocessing channel so it can be retried locally later.

Neither of these options is appropriate in all cases. For example, outcome 1 is appropriate when talking to a remote SMTP relay. But outcome 2 is appropriate when dealing with an SMTP submission from a local user.

While it would be possible in theory to handle temporary failures by using multiple rules with the same pattern, the overhead of repeating such queries, even with a cache in place, is unacceptable. For these reasons, the simple success/fall-through-to-the-next-rule matching model of domain rewriting is inadequate. Instead, a special template, specified by the MTA option DOMAIN_FAILURE, is used in the event of a domain lookup failure. When a $V operation fails, this template replaces the remainder of the current rewrite rule template being processed.