In article <[log in to unmask]>, "Terry Kennedy, Operations Mgr" <[log in to unmask]> says: > > Mail LISTSERV sends out for this list comes back with a bounce that says >"[log in to unmask] - no such user". When REVIEWing the list, this address >doesn't appear, because it's the result of forwarding that LISTSERV doesn't >know anything about. > > The DISTRIBUTE method that was suggested instead of probes will suffer from >the same problem, as there isn't any way to identify which list subscriber >the bounce pertains to, right? > > With probes, LISTSERV puts the subscriber address (with things like @'s and >.'s escaped) in the From: address, so when it gets a probe bounce, it knows >exactly which subscriber the bounce is for. That's much more useful. That's >also why wildcard owner-* aliases are needed for probes to work (and hence >my Sendmail patch to implement same). What is not clear to me is if the DISTRIBUTE MAIL bounces w/o a clear source of the problem child, why is it that the PROBE feature will be any better in revealing that same problem? Won't the FROM: be just as easily managled, hidden? (As Mark indicated, this was a semi-automated method of REVEALing the bad address, not the be-all and end-all in list management). BTW, less it was unclear, the manually submitted DISTRIBUTE MAIL job is generating individual TO:'s unless the person sending the DISTRIBUTE job changed all user names to the uppercased string BSMTP. Another method of on-demand probes that I've had variable success is to do a SET listname SHORT822 FOR *@*problem_domain QUIET SET listname SHORT FOR *@*problem_domain (care needs to be taken for Usenet gateways). Successfully used this technique this a.m. to find some non-specific bounces. -- co-owner: INFOSYS, TQM-L, CPARK-L, ERAPPA-L, JANITORS, LDBASE-L, et -L URL:mailto:[log in to unmask] "I get paid by the millisecond"