Knowledge base
An interpretation of the reply, not the reply itself
The name of the category assigned by a pattern based on the text of the receiver’s response.
Written by default in bounce and transient failure records, in delivery records it has to be named in record-fields. The field set is defined in the accounting block, and fields are worth adding deliberately: there are as many delivery records as delivered recipients, and every extra column is multiplied by that volume.
The category can be redefined with your own patterns — then our name gets into accounting instead of the vendor’s.
The main trap is assuming the field is the same for all record types. For b, t and rb it is in the default set, for d it is not: the star in record-fields d will not give it, and in a shared file those lines keep the column empty.
What the Hub does. It reads it — this is one of the fourteen fields the event normalizer parses. So the field must be included in the record, otherwise part of the telemetry will arrive empty.
Recommended values
Where the field exists and whether the star includes it:
| Record type | In the star |
|---|---|
| d — delivery | no |
| b — bounce | yes |
| t — temporary failure | yes |
| rb, rs — external report | yes |
In a shared file an empty value comes in two kinds: the line has no data — or the field is not selected for its record type.
The record types with this field and the default set markers come from the manual (§ 12.2.1, § 12.2.2, § 12.2.3, § 12.2.6); a list without the star replaces the set — § 3.3.11.12. The table is ours.
Example configuration
<acct-file /var/log/pmta/acct.csv> record-fields d *, bounceCat</acct-file>
For b, t and rb the field comes with the star; for d it is added explicitly.
yellow — — directive names, blue — blocks. They are highlighted the same way in the text of the card.
Compatibility
PowerMTA 6.0
described in the manual of this version · platform: any
The vendor does not state the first version for every directive — there is no note here. The name also appears in the 5.0 edition of the manual.
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Related entries
0 relations
How to check on the node
Check whether the column is in the latest accounting file:
head -1 "$(ls -t /var/log/pmta/acct-*.csv | head -1)" | tr -d '\r' | tr ',' '\n' | grep -n '^bounceCat$'
The line number in the output is the column number in the file; empty means the field is not selected for any record type in this file.
In the Hub
- Cost of a mistake
- safe: a wrong value breaks nothing
- Priority
- critical