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Knowledge base

PMTA knowledge base›Accounting record§ 12.2

Complaint

f
The recipient complained

A complaint report was received and parsed by the configured processor.

The record type letter is f. It comes first in the line, and that is how the parser tells one type from another.

We do have such records: the complaint processor on the node catches fbl@fbl.<domain>, and the records go via webhook to the Hub together with the Feedback-ID header.

In the Hub they end up in the fleet panels, in the health score and in the warm-up counters.

The main trap is counting things from the wrong records. One record type answers one question, and a substitution gives a plausible wrong number: attempts instead of messages, queues instead of recipients, the day a report was received instead of the day of sending.
What the Hub does. It receives such records: the complaint processor on the node accepts reports at fbl@fbl.<domain>, and the telemetry block sends them via webhook together with the Feedback-ID header. In the Hub, complaints end up in the fleet panels, in the health score and in the warm-up counters.

The conditions outside the node: an MX record for fbl.<domain> pointing to the node and a feedback loop with the provider registered for this address. Without them there will be no records, even though the processor is configured.

Recommended values

Which question this record answers:

Question Is it this record
the recipient complained yes
how many messages in total only together with the other types
why it happened look at the reply text, not at the record type

Record types are enabled and disabled in the accounting block. A disabled type does not disappear from a report — it disappears from the data, and the absence of events becomes indistinguishable from there genuinely being none.

The separation of questions is ours. From the manual here are the condition under which the record appears and its letter.
Example configuration
# the first letter of the line is the record type
f,2019-02-08 21:53:41+0000,...
Parsing accounting starts with this letter: all the other columns make sense only in combination with it.
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

2 relations

Does not work without

Two inbound report processors and what to do with themInbound report processors are what create this record. § 12.2.7

Can be replaced by

Hand a message to a webhook instead of a receiverThe report can not only be written but also passed to your own service over HTTP. inference

Referenced from

Complaints parsed by the node — and they are parsed secondThe accounting record a parsed complaint ends up in. § 13.7The second complaint report formatThe accounting record in which the result is visible. § 13.7.2

How to check on the node
How many records of each type arrived:
grep -c "^f," /var/log/pmta/acct-*.csv
cut -d, -f1 /var/log/pmta/acct-*.csv | sort | uniq -c
Zero while sending is going on means one of two things: there are no events of this kind, or the record type is disabled in the accounting block. The second command helps tell them apart — it prints a summary across all types.
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What else to read

3 articles

◇Complaints parsed by the node — and they are parsed secondMail that arrives at an address from the configured list is parsed as a complaint report; the parsing order matters — the complaint processor runs after the bounce processor.◇What the node tells about itself and through which channelsSeven observation surfaces: the web monitor, the console in four formats, the log, accounting, accounting search, metrics and export to external analytics.◇The watchdog that restarts the engineKeeps an eye on the engine and brings it back up after a crash by itself, sending a crash report to the postmaster address.

In the Hub
Cost of a mistake
safe: a wrong value breaks nothing
Scenarios
Troubleshoot deliverability · Address suppression