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Wed, 5 Sep 90 12:06:46 EDT |
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From time to time I receive mail failure messages (as postmaster for
JHUVM) that I think should be sent elsewhere. The specific case I'm
thinking of involves users who use distribute jobs to send files over
the network. Consider the following scenario:
- User X at node AAA sends a dist job to a backbone Listserv
- Listserv at JHUVM handles part of the distribution since user Y
at node JHUVMS is to receive a copy of the file. (And JHUVM is
the backbone Listserv closest to JHUVMS.)
- PMDF on JHUVMS realizes that it cannot deliver mail to user Y and
attempts to return the mail. It picks up the address in the "Sender:"
field and voila, Listserv@JHUVM ends up with the mail.
So, being the postmaster, I receive mail from X@AAA destined for [log in to unmask]
Since I didn't send it, it's not a mailing list maintained at JHUVM, and
the destination address isn't my machine, I can't do anything about it.
I end up forwarding the error info back to X@AAA and/or [log in to unmask]
After talking to the person responsible for PMDF here, I'm not certain that
he can configure his code in a way that will handle the situation any
better. My question to the list is, has anyone come up with a way to
handle this type of situation? Short of coding something like "return
failed mail to 'Sender:' except when it's Listserv, then use 'From:'",
what can be done? Would anything break if Listserv included an "Errors-to:"
header line when constructing the distributed mail? If not, then perhaps
the email address of the user submitting the job could be placed there.
Then things like PMDF could key off the "Errors-to:" address rather than
the "Sender:" field.
Of course, I might be missing something obvious here. If so, just
clue me in, and I'll go away quietly... :-)
-jj
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