The Online World resources handbook

Electronic mail, telex, and fax http://home.eunet.no/~presno/bok/7.html
Returned mail
Once you have learned the basics of Internet mail, it is relatively easy. However, be
ready for some glitches and hiccups due to incompatibilities between email systems,
gateways, protocols, clients, etc. While this is not an "Internet problem" by itself, it will
look like one.
Returned mail is one of the results. When an email address is incorrect in some
way, the mail system will bounce (route) the message back to the sender. Reasons may
be that the system's name is wrong, the domain does not exist, or because there was
some configuration problem on the receiver's end. This also happens if the receiver's
mailbox is full.
The most common error is addressing mail to a non existent account name or
network address. For example, I have seen many users trying to send mail to
LISTSERV@VM1.NODAK.EDU using LISTSERV@VML.NODAK.EDU. When the
address is written in lower case letters, a user may easily interpret the number "1" in the
address as the letter "l". Alas, the result is an error message.
Let us construct an error when sending to LISTSERV@VM1.NODAK.EDU. Let us
send a mail to "pistserv@VM1.NODAK.EDU" instead, which is a wrong address.
The good news is that the returned message will include the reason for the
bounce. Below, you will find the full text of the bounced message. It contains much
technical information, and most lines have no interest. Also, the message is much larger
than the original message, which contained three lines only.
When browsing the bounced message, note that it has three distinct parts: [1] The
mailer header of the bounced message itself (here, the 13 first lines), [2] The text of the
error report (from line 14 until the line "Original message follows:"), and [3] the mailer
header and text of your original message (as received by computer reporting the error):
From MAILER@VM1.NoDak.EDU Fri Dec 18 12:54:03 1992
Return Path:
Received: from vm1.NoDak.edu by pat.uio.no with SMTP (PP)
id ; Fri, 18 Dec 1992 12:53:54 +0100
Received: from NDSUVM1.BITNET by VM1.NoDak.EDU (IBM VM SMTP V2R2)
with BSMTP id 9295; Fri, 18 Dec 92 05:53:27 CST
Received: from NDSUVM1.BITNET by NDSUVM1.BITNET (Mailer R2.07)
with BSMTP id 3309; Fri, 18 Dec 92 05:53:26 CST
Date: Fri, 18 Dec 92 05:53:26 CST
From: Network Mailer
To: presno@eunet.no
Subject: mail delivery error
Status: R
Batch SMTP transaction log follows:
220 NDSUVM1.BITNET Columbia MAILER R2.07 BSMTP service ready.
050 HELO NDSUVM1
250 NDSUVM1.BITNET Hello NDSUVM1
050 MAIL FROM:
250 ... sender OK.
050 RCPT TO:
250 ... recipient OK.
050 DATA
354 Start mail input. End with .
554 Mail not delivered to some or all recipients:
554 No such local user: PISTSERV
050 QUIT
221 NDSUVM1.BITNET Columbia MAILER BSMTP service done.
Original message follows:
Received: from NDSUVM1 by NDSUVM1.BITNET
(Mailer R2.07) with BSMTP id 3308;
Fri, 18 Dec 92 05:53:25 CST
Received: from pat.uio.no by VM1.NoDak.EDU
(IBM VM SMTP V2R2) with TCP;
Fri, 18 Dec 92 05:53:23 CST
Received: from ulrik.uio.no by pat.uio.no with local SMTP (PP)
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