A few days ago I sent a message to this list asking help to solve a
problem with delivery notifications distributed to a LISTSERV list
(I am appending the original message at the end of this one for reference).
I didn't receive any response, so I had to investigate a solution myself
that I want to explain here just in case somebody is interested. Also,
I got a possible suggestion for improvement in future releases of
LISTSERV.
The simple way to avoid many silly messages (like delivery notifications)
to be distributed to a list is to configure it with a Sender address
different from the default (the list itself). I have adopted the
convention of using addresses of the type [log in to unmask]
This address will receive all the junk mail generated by automatic reply
programs that is not filtered by LISTSERV (and there are quite a few if
you use FULLHDR).
As a further refinement I tried to use the Filter parameter to solve the
problem. The point here is that Filter looks only at the From field, and
those messages have various and valid From fields. However they all
have the same subject (X400 Inter-Personal Notification); is there any
way to configure a list (or LISTSERV) to reject messages if they have
certain values in the Subject field, in a similar way as is done for
the From field in the Filter parameter? It would be really nice.
Thank you,
----------------------- Original message -------------------------------
Date: Mon, 12 Sep 94 09:21:33 SET
From: Rogelio Montanana <[log in to unmask]>
Organization: Valencia University (Universitat de Valencia)
Subject: Problem with LISTSERV and delivery notifications
To: lstsrv-l@searn
Dear colleagues:
I am the owner of a large distribution list (307 recipients) where the
subscribers have many different kinds of mail systems and protocols.
They use NJE, SMTP, X.400 and VMS-Mail at least.
Recently I had problems because some users want to distribute MIME messages,
and LISTSERV discarded the MIME headers before distributing. Using the
FULLHDR option solved the problem.
Now, I got another problem. Some of the subscribers (notably the X.400 people)
can request an acknowledgement (delivery notification report) and some of them
do it by default all the time. This was not a problem for my list, because
LISTSERV was sistematically discarding all the X.400 garbage from the message
header, but now with FULLHDR ON, this X.400 information is preserved and
passed thru LISTSERV to the X.400 destinations, with the disturbing result
that *every* delivery notification is received by the 307 subscribers, not by
the author. One of those messages is the following:
----------------------------------------------------------------------
X-Envelope-to: [log in to unmask]
Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT
Message-type: InterPersonal Notification
X400-Content-type: P2-1984 (2)
X400-MTS-identifier: [/PRMD=es/ADMD=mensatex/C=es/;940909092943]
X400-Originator: [log in to unmask]
X400-Recipients: [log in to unmask]
References: <[log in to unmask]>
Message-ID: <[log in to unmask]>
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.whoiswho
Date: Fri, 9 Sep 1994 09:29:43 +0000
Reply-To: Personas relacionadas con RedIRIS <[log in to unmask]>
Sender: Personas relacionadas con RedIRIS <[log in to unmask]>
From: [log in to unmask]
Subject: X.400 Inter-Personal Notification
X-To: [log in to unmask]
To: Rogelio Montanana <[log in to unmask]>
Your message to: "(Miguel A. Garcia Lax)" <[log in to unmask]>
was delivered at 9 Sep 94 9:29 +0200
This notification was generated Automatically
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Now, I can envisage four possible solutions to this problem:
a) Supress FULLHDR for those users with delivery notification functionalities.
This is not nice since it will prevent them from using MIME, and will
requiere some kind of manual control on the subscription options that any
user can have.
b) Request those users to disable the delivery notification option when sending
messages to LISTSERV. This is not a safe solution since we rely on the
user's goodwill and awareness.
c) Configure recipient's mail user agents in such a way that delivery
notifications are sent to the author of the article, not to the
sender (the list itself). I have been told by mail experts that this
is not possible since delivery notifications *have to be* sent to the
sender.
d) Have LISTSERV to honor delivery notification requests. As an
additional safeguard, LISTSERV should prevent delivery notification
messages from being distributed, by filtering them and sending an
explanatory message to the originator (something similar to what is
made now when a user tries to distribute the same text twice thru
the same list).
Comments? Has other people experienced this problem?
---
Rogelio Montanana, System Analyst Tel:+34-6-3864310 Fax:+34-6-3864200
Valencia Univ. Computer Center Bitnet: montanan at evalun11
Dr. Moliner, 50 Internet: [log in to unmask]
46100 Burjassot Hepnet: evalun::montanan (or 16530::montanan)
Spain X400: C=es;A=mensatex;P=iris;O=uv;OU=ci;OU=vm;SN=montanan
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