Handling errors on local mail-list expansions

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2 total messages Started by Stuart Levy Sat, 07 Jan 1989 20:41

#3075

Author: Stuart Levy
Date: Sat, 07 Jan 1989 20:41

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We're running sendmail 5.59, and have a batch of aliases for redistributing
Internet mailing lists locally.  We don't control all the redistribuees,
and so sometimes messages bounce.  Although we have "owner-xxx" aliases
for each mailing list "xxx", the owner- aliases often don't receive the
error reports.

There seem to be two problems:
  1) mail passed downstream from such a redistribution is not tagged
     for error reporting to the given owner-* alias, e.g. by changing the
     SMTP Mail From: field or by adding an Errors-to: line to the message.
     That would be nice for limiting redistribution of downstream errors.
     Can anyone see why this shouldn't be done?

  2) (More serious)  If the mail can't be delivered on the first try,
     it's queued of course; *however*, there is no indication in the
     queued copy that the mail was originally sent through an alias
     nor that delivery errors should be sent to owner-alias.
     This appears to be hard to fix.

     So, if say a redistribuee is down for a while and all their mail
     starts timing out, the owner- alias will never see the replies!

Does anybody know how this might be fixed?  Or, how do *you* redistribute
mailing lists?

	Stuart Levy, Minnesota Supercomputer Center
	slevy@uc.msc.umn.edu, slevy@nic.mr.net

Re: Handling errors on local mail-list expansions

#3079

Author: Matt Crawford
Date: Mon, 09 Jan 1989 17:14

9 lines
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I distribute mailing lists the same way you do, Stuart, and I've
grumbled at the same problems.  I looked into fixing them inside
sendmail and it didn't look easy, nor was it perfecly obvious that
the result would be "Correct".

I've seen some other people's cute tricks involving piping the
outgoing list mail to "sendmail -f list-owner ...".  Messy, but
it does do the job.
				Matt Crawford

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