Re: [Exim] Autoreply which sends no message

On 30-Mar-01 at 16:13:30 Philip Hazel wrote:
>> > Hmm. Why don't you just allow normal vacation processing on the master,
>> > and then throw away any message containing the X-header? What have I
>> > missed? [This means that messages get delivered, but no vacation
>> > processing is done, when the master is down.]
>> >
>
Sorry, but having thought about the directors you suggested, no this is not
what we want to do.

What I want is to have our master/slave mailhubs act just like the DNS
master/slave systems would. If we lose our master (primary) DNS name server
then, at least for some time, no-one will notice anything different - ignore
things like zone updates, expiry times, etc :-) Typically any request sent
to the secondary can be answered without the primary. If we lose our master
mailhub I do not want anyone noticing anything different, or at least as
little difference as possible.

So, both the master and slave system must handle all aspects of the vacation
processing. However, since the 'log' and 'once' files are involved we must
ensure that they are kept in-sync on both systems. At the moment our slave
mailhub will not handle vacation messages at all, the whole thing is sent to
the master. This is of course no good if we lose the master. My 'test'
version currently has the slave sending the message to the recipient and
sending it across to the master system. The master 'detects' this (the X-
header) and does not send the message to the recipient - your director does
this nicely. However, in dealing with the autoreply I cannot get just the
'once' and 'log' files updated unless I arrange for the autoreply transport
to ditch the message it would send back to the sender. To do this I had to
use the 'nobody' address. Using the 'nobody' address in the 'to=' option
causes that address to be logged (in the 'log' file) and not the original
senders address. It was at this point that I sent the original message
concerning all this :-)

Again, having said all that my thought now is why not simply ditch the 'log'
file? That allows me to use the nobody address with no problem - *unless*
this address is also the one recorded in the once file; I have not tested
this yet. I think I originally included the 'log' option simply because it
may have been useful. However, I can't say I have ever been asked anything
which required my looking in that file - I'll have to check with the other
postmasters first though.

Regards,

John.