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My favorite error code

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Yesterday I'd mentioned X.400 OM error codes.  Originally, the primary message transport for Exchange was an x.400 transport (this changed with Exchange 2000).  At one point, one of the Exchange MTA developers told me about his favorite x.400 error code:

   ERROR_RECIPIENT_DEAD

Yup, x.400 apparently defined a non delivery status code that indicates that the person who was supposed to receive the email message was no longer alive. 

Given that x.400 was developed by the post office (PTT), this error code actually makes sense - the PTT had non delivery codes for physical mail that indicated that the recipient of a physical mail message was deceased, so they simply translated their physical mail error codes into electronic mail.

 

Unfortunately, I can't come up with an independant confirmation of this (except my recollection of the conversation), so I can't cite a reference.

Edit: This just gets better.  One of the MTA testers just sent me a private email indicating that Exchange had re-used that particular error code value as the error code mapping for an access denied error on public folders.  One of the gateways for Exchange did a simple minded error code->text mapping and we got a bug from one of our testers saying "I just got this NDR when I sent mail to a public folder: "Mail could not be delivered.  Recipient is dead." ".

Comments

  • Anonymous
    June 01, 2005
    One of the user-created programs that goes with the Zephyr communications suite used at CMU and MIT [and other places] has the error, "ACK! I've been signaled to death!"
  • Anonymous
    June 01, 2005
    It's even funnier in Swedish since in Swedish "ack" means "alas"...
  • Anonymous
    June 01, 2005
    I like RPC_X_PIPE_DISCIPLINE_ERROR.