Re: [exim] How to automate extraction of bounce messages for…

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Author: Dave Evans
Date:  
To: exim-users
Subject: Re: [exim] How to automate extraction of bounce messages for thepurpose of unsub'ing recipient addresses
On Sun, Sep 27, 2009 at 11:23:07AM +0200, Sven Agnew wrote:
> I manage an exim4 ( on Debian ) mail server which is tasked with sending
> solicited bulk mail. I do _not_ want this mail server ( or myself ) to
> be associated with spam in any way if possible.
>
> To this end, I would like to automatically extract bounce message
> details and their associated addresses from Exim's mail-logs to be piped
> into an unsub'ing script which removes addresses that have received
> 550-type bounces. I got this idea whilst reading AOL's
> postmaster.info.aol.com pages.
>
> I don't know if this is an elegant way to handle this sort of problem.
> Suggestions or recommendations are welcome.


Consider using Mailman: http://www.gnu.org/software/mailman/index.html
which is what drives this mailing list, and many others.

Mailman includes bounce processing, so that addresses which bounce
"excessively" or "fatally" are unsubscribed. (Not sure what's meant by that,
exactly - I'm quoting from the notifications that Mailman sends to the
administrator when this happens).

The way that Mailman does this is not perfect, and not trivial. Which leads
me to believe that if you wanted to implement something similar yourself,
doing so would not be trivial, and would likely not end up perfect :-) Hence
why I'm suggesting using Mailman - they've done a lot of the hard work for
you.

Regards,

--
Dave Evans
http://djce.org.uk/
http://djce.org.uk/pgpkey