posts lost thru gateway

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3 total messages Started by Jim Marco Thu, 18 Aug 1994 13:05

#1138

Author: Jim Marco
Date: Thu, 18 Aug 1994 13:05

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I own the list medforum@arizvm1.ccit.arizona.edu which is gated to
bit.listserv.medforum.  This is a moderated list, with listserv itself
as the moderator and Send=Private, to make sure that only subscribers 
can post messages.  
I have a user who has tried to post from the email side, and his posts
did not show up on usenet.  My first thought was that it was a return
address problem, and that listserv was rejecting his posts because it
did not know who he was.  But then he told me that he was in fact getting
"your message has been distributed" confirmation messages from listserv.
Hmm....so the messages were apparently being mailed out to the email
side (although I cannot verify this since I keep my own subscription
set nomail), yet they weren't making it to usenet.  Okay, so I reviewed 
the list and netnews@auvm is still subscribed...no funny business there.
So I posted my own test message from the email side and it passed thru
the gateway and showed up on usenet just fine.  I'm out of ideas...where
else could the problem be?  Is there anything I should ask him to try
to help figure out what the problem is?  Thanks.

-- 
Jim Marco -- doc@uiuc.edu

There is a green, multi-legged creature crawling on your shoulder.

Re: posts lost thru gateway

#1140

Author: Jim McIntosh
Date: Mon, 22 Aug 1994 16:30

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In article <32vm9s$h57@vixen.cso.uiuc.edu>, doc@uiuc.edu (Jim Marco) says:
>I have a user who has tried to post from the email side, and his posts
>did not show up on usenet...where
>else could the problem be?  Is there anything I should ask him to try
>to help figure out what the problem is?  Thanks.

This should probably be an FAQ, since it comes up so often. Most
mail software has a "deliver it if you possibly can" philosophy. This
means that if the headers are a little wierd, or the Message-ID does
not conform to the RFC, the message is delivered anyway. News, on
the other hand -- and INN in particular -- takes the opposite approach.
If a post is not completely correct, it is rejected. The reason is almost
always because it has a non-standard header.

To find out what the posts really look like you'll have to set your
subscription back to MAIL and then also set your subscription to
FULLHDR so you see exactly what the gateway sees. Then, when 
this person posts to the list, take a good look at their post. Look,
in particular, at the Date:, To:, From: and Message-ID: tags. Their
mailer may, for example, generate a Date: field that does not conform
to the RFC, or the address in the From: field may be incorrectly
formatted. When you find the bad header, let your subscriber know
so he can contact his mail vendor to get the problem fixed.

Jim McIntosh (jim@american.edu)
The American University
Washington DC 20016-8019 USA

Re: posts lost thru gateway

#1141

Author: Doug Sewell
Date: Thu, 25 Aug 1994 19:56

24 lines
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Jim McIntosh (JIM@american.edu) wrote:
: >to help figure out what the problem is?  Thanks.

: This should probably be an FAQ, since it comes up so often. Most
: mail software has a "deliver it if you possibly can" philosophy. This
: means that if the headers are a little wierd, or the Message-ID does
: not conform to the RFC, the message is delivered anyway. News, on
: the other hand -- and INN in particular -- takes the opposite approach.
: If a post is not completely correct, it is rejected. The reason is almost
: always because it has a non-standard header.

While it's been so long since I've looked at PSU NetNews I don't remember
what it does, I know that e-mail is deliverable without a Subject: header
but that INN (and I believe C-News) both toss the article if there's no
subject involved.

The E-mail gateway I'm using doesn't automatically insert a Subject: header
so I hacked a solution, but be aware that this can be a problem.

-- 
Doug Sewell (doug@cc.ysu.edu)   Left alle... what ?! http://cc.ysu.edu/1/doug

de-moc-ra-cy (di mok' ra see) n.  Three wolves and a sheep voting on what's
for dinner -- Bill Gunshannon, bill@cs.uofs.edu

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