After receiving  a message  from the  gateway at (no  that's not  a typo)
[log in to unmask]   (the  name   was  "System
PRIVILEGED  account") with  subject "Warning:  Failed VMS  mail", a  long
blurb  explaining that  some  DECNET link  was  down and  a  copy of  the
beginning  of  the body  of  a  message with  the  header  removed, I  am
seriously considering the concept of a  "hate list" for gateways. I guess
it would be  a file with patterns  and control words that  I would update
periodically. Mail from any user matching one of the patterns in the file
would be subjected to a special  treatment, depending on the control word
following  the pattern.  It could  be discarded  and forgotten  about, or
transferred to  the postmaster without being  replied to, or result  in a
nastygram back saying that we are  very sorry but your gateway is causing
us problems so  you will not be  able to send commands until  you get the
gatemaster to fix  his code. Typically, the 2 first  cases would apply to
specific entries (like the one I  mentioned above - gateways which should
be ignored  or postmasterized), while  the last  case would be  used with
generic patterns like '*@*.broken.gateway' when  the postmaster is fed up
with users repeatedly attempting to use the server through a gateway that
keeps bouncing  the resulting mail back  to his reader. Actually,  both a
local  and a  global  "hate list"  are needed,  with  the possibility  to
override the global one with an entry in the local one.
 
Does this sound like the right solution to the problem?
 
  Eric