On Thu, 21 Jul 1994 17:38:05 -0500 Ol' blue eyes <[log in to unmask]> said: > But it didn't do it before 1.8, did it? It did it since 1.7f. LMail didn't translate SMTP's delivery errors before 1.2a. > Seems to me that its handling of this sort of error, which is > usually much less of a problem than systems holding undelivered > messages for X days before telling the listowner about it > (grrrrrr...), is unduly harsh and arbitrary. Then disable it. Some people have time and patience with broken systems, some can't afford to be that patient. > It's *easy* to set a bad address nomail, so 'renew' will > eventually delete it, or delete it. Most lists do not use "renew", and a user that got set NOMAIL is as good as a signed off user. In fact, setting NOMAIL would be even worse. The user, not seeing any mail, would send a SUBSCRIBE command, and be told he's already on the list. Ah well, looks like everyone's on vacation. With a clean deletion, he can at least re-subscribe. > OTOH, there's nothing to do except grin and bear it when you > know that you'll be getting bounce messages from somewhere for > the next X days. There's not much LISTSERV can do about it. > WRT the specific address that caused me to write, it's ironic > that I received a personal note from the very same person at > almost exactly the same time that the auto-deletion message got > here. Call it ironic if you will, I call it sad. There is nothing particularly difficult with making a system that does exist (and accounts which do exist) look like they do indeed exist, even when the machine is down or the links are down. I don't believe any of the systems I manage ever gave a LISTSERV the opportunity to delete a user that did exist. All it takes is the same level of attention when updating your configuration that you use when writing a check or the like. If you wrote a check for $50,000 when you meant to write $50 and the bank bounced it and locked your account, you wouldn't say they've been harsh, you'd think "Darn, that will teach me to be more careful when writing checks, I really shouldn't make such mistakes!" The bottom line is that there is no excuse for not having a working setup. Blaming LISTSERV for following the advice it received really doesn't accomplish much. On the other hand, if a system administrator meets a mob of angry users at his door every time he doesn't pay attention when updating his system, there is a good chance he will learn. Eric