Re: [Exim] Unknown users and return-path/Resent-from

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Author: Philip Hazel
Date:  
To: John Horne
CC: Exim Users List
Subject: Re: [Exim] Unknown users and return-path/Resent-from
On Thu, 17 Feb 2000, John Horne wrote:

> However, in our case, and as pointed out by Jonathan Hunter,
> 'forwarding' here is referring to the user actually reading the message and
> deliberately clicking the 'forward' button to send the message to another
> user.


Oh! That's a completely different kettle of fish. In that case, I would
say that a reasonable MUA should "normally" resend a new message, with a
new envelope sender. The user should need to take special action to
achieve the "bounce" feature. Indeed, if the MUA is unprivileged and the
MTA is Exim running on the same host, the MUA *cannot* adjust the
envelope recipient.

Example: on this host, I run Pine. I can "forward" - which wraps the old
message in a new one, or "bounce", which does not. However, even if I do
"bounce" - i.e. I resend the old message unchanged, the envelope
recipient gets set to me.

The problem, of course, is when the MUA is running on a different host;
the MTA can't do the same kind of checking. (And some don't check.)

> No, I want to modify the envelope RCPT TO on the delivery failure message
> sent out. So, I assume, I can specify this address in the smartuser director
> and use the $reply_address which is the address (taken from Resent-from:,
> From: header) of the user who sent the message (i.e. the user on the file
> server) isn't it? E.g.:     new_address = $reply_address


I presume you have some way of distinguishing these delivery failure
messages from other delivery failures that should not be changed? If it
is something along the lines of

"If this is a delivery failure ($sender_address is empty) and there
is a Resent-from: header, and the address in the resent-from header
is one of our local users, then change the recipient address to that
value"

I guess that might work.

-- 
Philip Hazel            University of Cambridge Computing Service,
ph10@???      Cambridge, England. Phone: +44 1223 334714.