On Thu, 23 May 2002 15:35:51 CDT, Feather Lacy <[log in to unmask]> said: > Given that, we would still like to set the RFC821 "from" for > administrative mail from listserv to reference a real e-mail address, like > we set the Postmaster. > > Is that possible in LISTSERV? No, and for a very good reason. Listserv intentionally uses the null MAIL FROM so there *is* no bounce message coming back for certain classes of mail. Otherwise, the following can happen: 1) Your Listserv sends out mail with MAIL FROM:<[log in to unmask]> 2) The other end can't deliver, so it bounces back - and since THEY don't believe in MAIL FROM:<> either, they set it to <[log in to unmask]> 3) If [log in to unmask] bounces (due to quota, temporary problem, ANY reason, bounce to <[log in to unmask]> 4) They bounce to [log in to unmask] You see a pattern starting here? It's *particularly* nasty if your.domain and their.domain are the same - in other words, if you ever get a double-bounce, your mail server will then go into a hard loop forwarding the bounce messages back to your failing address, similar to the loop you get if mail to Postmaster bounces, and you have your MTA send a copy of all bounces to Postmaster... ;) Trust me, you DONT want to do it. Even when Listserv uses MAIL FROM:<>, a lot of bounces come back *ANYHOW*. I've appended an example of what often comes back anyhow - I see 20-30 of these a *DAY*, and it would easily be 20 times that if <> didn't suppress most bounces... /Valdis --- start example bounce Subject: Postmaster notify: see transcript for details From: Mail Delivery Subsystem <[log in to unmask]> Date: Thu, 23 May 2002 19:45:15 -0400 To: [log in to unmask] ----- The following addresses had permanent fatal errors ----- <[log in to unmask]> (reason: 550 User Does Not Exist.) ----- Transcript of session follows ----- ... while talking to mail.absoft.fr.: >>> RCPT To:<[log in to unmask]> <<< 550 User Does Not Exist. 550 5.1.1 <[log in to unmask]>... User unknown Subject: Message ("Your message dated Thu, 23 May 2002 16:13:49...") From: "L-Soft list server at LISTSERV.VT.EDU (1.8d)" <[log in to unmask]> Date: Thu, 23 May 2002 19:45:07 -0400 To: [log in to unmask] Your message dated Thu, 23 May 2002 16:13:49 -1900 with subject "Pay nothing for your conference calls!" has been submitted to the moderator of the AIR-L list: --- end example message ---