Re: [Exim] inconsistent defer message

On Thu, 31 Jul 2003, Philip Hazel wrote:

> Sorry, I'd forgotten about this additional feature. You should be able
> to override this by setting
>
> smtp_return_error_details = true

Just a general comment (I haven't looked into whether it's relevant
here), but after a verify failure I found it was *also* necessary
to include $acl_verify_message into the message that we were
generating.

> [*] But I suspect very few humans actually read such messages -

Nevertheless, I *do* like to put something useful in for any "good
guys" who _are_ reading them, provided it doesn't give too much away
for any spammerslime who might be bothering to look.

Such error messages certainly _do_ appear in reports that some
offering MTAs generate in response to a rejection: in my capacity as
postmaster I've seen quite a number of examples quoted at me by
aggrieved senders who had mail rejected by us, although I have to add
that in most cases it was clear that the aggrieved party had omitted
to take any note of them, since the cause of their problem was clearly
stated and yet they wrote as if they had no idea what it was.

But at least by getting it quoted back at me, I was able to home-in
more accurately on the problem (and to quote it back to the
complainant with some dusty comment, if I was having a bad day...).

> and we
> know that some software mangles the messages. For example, some software
> reports all 550 errors as "Unknown user", whatever the text says. :-(

The same vendor (YKWIM) first came to my attention in this kind of
regard with their tendency to discard accurate error reports from web
servers and to substitute some vague invention of their own in their
browser. Sigh. But a server's gotta do what a server's gotta do (to
paraphrase).