On Tue, 29 Jul 1997 16:50:31 +0100 (BST) Chris Thompson <cet1@???>
wrote:
> Alex Sharaz writes:
> [...]
> > I've got a number of scripts that generate a standard set of automatic replies
> > for mail messages going to
> >
> > a). Invalid e-mail addresses
> > b). duplicate addresses
> > c). People who have specifically requested that they do not receive e-mail
> > e). etc .....
>
> You shouldn't think of things like this as "automatic replies". They are
> delivery failure reports.
>
> Well (a) and (c), anyway. I am not sure what you mean by (b).
>
(b). is where someone send mail to A.Other@??? where there is a
person called A.N.Other@??? and another one called
A.B.Other@???. Usually we have a mapping from A.Other to A.<2nd
initial>.Other. In the above case you cannot do this because there are 2 people
with the same 1st inital. In this case, a message is returned to the sender
saying that the address they tried to use cannot be resolved to an individual
user.
> > The scripts run on our PP mail hubs and they send an auto-reply to either
> >
> > The Reply-To address if it exists,
> > The From Field if it exists,
> > The address passed as an argument to the shell
> > script.
> >
> > The list in question has a Reply-To field set up to be the sender of the
> > message, while the 1st argument to the shell script is of the form
> > owner-<listname>-l@........
>
> That last thing what you is refering to is the "return path", a.k.a. the
> "envelope sender". It is where delivery failure reports should be sent to.
>
o.k.
> > The list manager says that I should send all error to the owner... address and
> > not the reply-to or from addresses.
>
> She or he is absolutely right.
>
> > What do other people do? If it's the LISTSERV d-list owner, do you just check
> > for the "owner-XXX-l" string in the sender (?) header? If I have to check for
> > messages from LISTSERV type list, are their any other d-list services I have to
> > check for as well?
>
> You shouldn't be doing anything different for "LISTSERV type messages" than
> for any other message. Always send delivery failure reports to the return path
> that came with the message (unless it is itself an error report, indicated
> by having a null return path: in that case do not send a report at all).
> It is all explained in RFC 822.
>
o.k.
Point taken, If a message gets as far as one of my scripts, it's a DR and not
an automatic reply. I'll ammend my scripts to take this into account
> An example of something that is normally considered an "automatic reply",
> rather than a delivery failure or warning report, is a vacation message.
> Here the message does go to the Reply-To address, and the way that noise
> from mailing list expansions is avoided is to send it only if the To (or
> sometimes Cc) headers contain a recognisable personal e-mail address for
> the recipient.
>
> Chris Thompson Cambridge University Computing Service,
> Email: cet1@??? New Museums Site, Cambridge CB2 3QG,
> Phone: +44 1223 334715 United Kingdom.
>
Thanks for taking the time to explain the above.
Alex
Rfc822:A.Sharaz@???
X.400:I=A;S=Sharaz:ou=Computer Centre;O=Hull;Prmd=UK.AC;C=GB
X.500:cn=Alexander Sharaz@ou=Computer Centre@o=University of Hull@c=GB
Sent using Simeon Mercury Alpha 3 over Win-OS2
