} Hi folks,
}
} I run a mailing list with a couple hundred users, and I'm tired of having
} to manually handle bounces from addresses on the list.
}
} I need some way to put the recipient address in the message, such that if
} it bounces, I can quickly and reliably find out who the recipient was and
} automatically remove the address from the list. What happens now is when I
} mail to "the-list", the "To:" address shows up as "the-list@???".
}
} There has to be a way to do this.. and if there isn't, it's high time
} somebody came up with one. Computers are supposed to do exactly this kind
} of work for us :)
There is a way to do this. At present I don't believe it can be done by
exim, and there is a price to pay.
The way to do it is to put the information about the list and subscriber
into the envelope sender address - this basically works for anything
except possibly the most pathological sites that junk all useful
information. It is exactly how qmail handles lists (look through
http://www.qmail.org/ ).
The price is not immediately obvious. However if every outgoing message
has a unique (to the list & recipient) envelope sender address, then each
message must be in a different envelope. Hence for a list of 5000
subscribers, 5000 SMTP sessions must be set up and processed. Dan
Bernstein, author of qmail, believes that this is a good tradeoff. Even
in our position as an ISP I cannot afford to be so profligate with
bandwidth! Dan's position is that latency and traceability are all, you
must make your own decisions as to this.
Qmail is the hottest thing around for ease of mailing list handling, you
have to decide if you can afford it!
Nigel.
--
[ Nigel.Metheringham@??? - Systems Software Engineer ]
[ Tel : +44 113 251 6012 Fax : +44 113 224 0003 ]
[ Friends don't let friends use sendmail! Sendmail: just say no! ]
