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