Standard bulk delivery

Mailman has several built in strategies for completing the actual delivery of messages to the immediate upstream mail transport agent, which completes the actual final delivery to recipients.

Bulk delivery attempts to deliver as few copies of the identical message as possible to as many recipients as possible. By grouping recipients this way, bandwidth between Mailman and the MTA, and consequently between the MTA and remote mail servers, can be greatly reduced. The downside is the messages cannot be personalized. See verp.txt for an alternative strategy.

>>> from mailman.mta.bulk import BulkDelivery

The standard bulk deliverer takes as an argument the maximum number of recipients per session. The default is to deliver the message in one chunk, containing all recipients.

>>> bulk = BulkDelivery()

Delivery strategies must implement the proper interface.

>>> from mailman.interfaces.mta import IMailTransportAgentDelivery
>>> from zope.interface.verify import verifyObject
>>> verifyObject(IMailTransportAgentDelivery, bulk)
True

Chunking recipients

The set of final recipients is contained in the recipients key in the message metadata. When max_recipients is specified as zero, then the bulk deliverer puts all recipients into one big chunk.

>>> from string import ascii_letters
>>> recipients = set(letter + 'person@example.com'
...                  for letter in ascii_letters)

>>> chunks = list(bulk.chunkify(recipients))
>>> len(chunks)
1
>>> len(chunks[0])
52

Let say the maximum number of recipients allowed is 4, then no chunk will have more than 4 recipients, though they can have fewer (but still not zero).

>>> bulk = BulkDelivery(4)
>>> chunks = list(bulk.chunkify(recipients))
>>> len(chunks)
13
>>> all(0 < len(chunk) <= 4 for chunk in chunks)
True

The chunking algorithm sorts recipients by top level domain by length.

>>> recipients = set([
...     'anne@example.com',
...     'bart@example.org',
...     'cate@example.net',
...     'dave@example.com',
...     'elle@example.org',
...     'fred@example.net',
...     'gwen@example.com',
...     'herb@example.us',
...     'ione@example.net',
...     'john@example.com',
...     'kate@example.com',
...     'liam@example.ca',
...     'mary@example.us',
...     'neil@example.net',
...     'ocho@example.org',
...     'paco@example.xx',
...     'quaq@example.zz',
...     ])

>>> bulk = BulkDelivery(4)
>>> chunks = list(bulk.chunkify(recipients))
>>> len(chunks)
6

We can’t make any guarantees about sorting within each chunk, but we can tell a few things. For example, the first two chunks will be composed of .net (4) and .org (3) domains (for a total of 7).

>>> len(chunks[0])
4
>>> len(chunks[1])
3

>>> for address in sorted(chunks[0].union(chunks[1])):
...     print(address)
bart@example.org
cate@example.net
elle@example.org
fred@example.net
ione@example.net
neil@example.net
ocho@example.org

We also know that the next two chunks will contain .com (5) addresses.

>>> len(chunks[2])
4
>>> len(chunks[3])
1

>>> for address in sorted(chunks[2].union(chunks[3])):
...     print(address)
anne@example.com
dave@example.com
gwen@example.com
john@example.com
kate@example.com

The next chunk will contain the .us (2) and .ca (1) domains.

>>> len(chunks[4])
3
>>> for address in sorted(chunks[4]):
...     print(address)
herb@example.us
liam@example.ca
mary@example.us

The final chunk will contain the outliers, .xx (1) and .zz (2).

>>> len(chunks[5])
2
>>> for address in sorted(chunks[5]):
...     print(address)
paco@example.xx
quaq@example.zz

Bulk delivery

The set of recipients for bulk delivery comes from the message metadata. If there are no calculated recipients, nothing gets sent.

>>> mlist = create_list('test@example.com')
>>> msg = message_from_string("""\
... From: aperson@example.org
... To: test@example.com
... Subject: test one
... Message-ID: <aardvark>
...
... This is a test.
... """)

>>> bulk = BulkDelivery()
>>> bulk.deliver(mlist, msg, {})
{}
>>> len(list(smtpd.messages))
0

>>> bulk.deliver(mlist, msg, dict(recipients=set()))
{}
>>> len(list(smtpd.messages))
0

With bulk delivery and no maximum number of recipients, there will be just one message sent, with all the recipients packed into the envelope recipients (i.e. RCTP TO).

>>> recipients = set('person_{0:02d}'.format(i) for i in range(100))
>>> msgdata = dict(recipients=recipients)
>>> bulk.deliver(mlist, msg, msgdata)
{}

>>> messages = list(smtpd.messages)
>>> len(messages)
1
>>> print(messages[0].as_string())
From: aperson@example.org
To: test@example.com
Subject: test one
Message-ID: <aardvark>
...
X-RcptTo: person_...
    person_...
...

This is a test.

The X-RcptTo: header contains the set of recipients, in sorted order.

>>> len(messages[0]['x-rcptto'].split(','))
100

When the maximum number of recipients is set to 20, 5 messages will be sent, each with 20 addresses in the RCPT TO.

>>> bulk = BulkDelivery(20)
>>> bulk.deliver(mlist, msg, msgdata)
{}

>>> messages = list(smtpd.messages)
>>> len(messages)
5
>>> for message in messages:
...     x_rcptto = message['x-rcptto']
...     print('Number of recipients:', len(x_rcptto.split(',')))
Number of recipients: 20
Number of recipients: 20
Number of recipients: 20
Number of recipients: 20
Number of recipients: 20

Delivery headers

The sending agent shows up in the RFC 5321 MAIL FROM, which shows up in the X-MailFrom: header in the sample message.

The bulk delivery module calculates the sending agent address first from the message metadata...

>>> bulk = BulkDelivery()
>>> recipients = set(['aperson@example.com'])
>>> msgdata = dict(recipients=recipients,
...                sender='asender@example.org')
>>> bulk.deliver(mlist, msg, msgdata)
{}

>>> message = list(smtpd.messages)[0]
>>> print(message.as_string())
From: aperson@example.org
To: test@example.com
Subject: test one
Message-ID: <aardvark>
X-Peer: ...
X-MailFrom: asender@example.org
X-RcptTo: aperson@example.com

This is a test.

...followed by the mailing list’s bounces robot address...

>>> del msgdata['sender']
>>> bulk.deliver(mlist, msg, msgdata)
{}

>>> message = list(smtpd.messages)[0]
>>> print(message.as_string())
From: aperson@example.org
To: test@example.com
Subject: test one
Message-ID: <aardvark>
X-Peer: ...
X-MailFrom: test-bounces@example.com
X-RcptTo: aperson@example.com

This is a test.

...and finally the site owner, if there is no mailing list target for this message.

>>> config.push('site-owner', """\
... [mailman]
... site_owner: site-owner@example.com
... """)

>>> bulk.deliver(None, msg, msgdata)
{}

>>> message = list(smtpd.messages)[0]
>>> print(message.as_string())
From: aperson@example.org
To: test@example.com
Subject: test one
Message-ID: <aardvark>
X-Peer: ...
X-MailFrom: site-owner@example.com
X-RcptTo: aperson@example.com

This is a test.

# Remove test configuration.
>>> config.pop('site-owner')

Delivery failures

Mailman does not do final delivery. Instead, it sends mail through a site local mail server which manages queuing and final delivery. However, even this local mail server can produce delivery failures visible to Mailman in certain situations.

For example, there could be a problem delivering to any of the specified recipients.

# Tell the mail server to fail on the next 3 RCPT TO commands, one for
# each recipient in the following message.
>>> smtpd.err_queue.put(('rcpt', 500))
>>> smtpd.err_queue.put(('rcpt', 500))
>>> smtpd.err_queue.put(('rcpt', 500))

>>> recipients = set([
...     'aperson@example.org',
...     'bperson@example.org',
...     'cperson@example.org',
...     ])
>>> msgdata = dict(recipients=recipients)

>>> msg = message_from_string("""\
... From: aperson@example.org
... To: test@example.com
... Subject: test three
... Message-ID: <camel>
...
... This is a test.
... """)

>>> failures = bulk.deliver(mlist, msg, msgdata)
>>> for address in sorted(failures):
...     print(address, failures[address][0],
...                    failures[address][1].decode('ascii'))
aperson@example.org 500 Error: SMTPRecipientsRefused
bperson@example.org 500 Error: SMTPRecipientsRefused
cperson@example.org 500 Error: SMTPRecipientsRefused

>>> messages = list(smtpd.messages)
>>> len(messages)
0

Or there could be some other problem causing an SMTP response failure.

# Tell the mail server to register a temporary failure on the next MAIL
# FROM command.
>>> smtpd.err_queue.put(('mail', 450))

>>> failures = bulk.deliver(mlist, msg, msgdata)
>>> for address in sorted(failures):
...     print(address, failures[address][0],
...                    failures[address][1].decode('ascii'))
aperson@example.org 450 Error: SMTPResponseException
bperson@example.org 450 Error: SMTPResponseException
cperson@example.org 450 Error: SMTPResponseException

# Tell the mail server to register a permanent failure on the next MAIL
# FROM command.
>>> smtpd.err_queue.put(('mail', 500))

>>> failures = bulk.deliver(mlist, msg, msgdata)
>>> for address in sorted(failures):
...     print(address, failures[address][0],
...                    failures[address][1].decode('ascii'))
aperson@example.org 500 Error: SMTPResponseException
bperson@example.org 500 Error: SMTPResponseException
cperson@example.org 500 Error: SMTPResponseException

XXX Untested: socket.error, IOError, smtplib.SMTPException.

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