Ben Parker wrote:
[...]
> Perhaps the Princeton.EDU mail flows through some anti-spam or anti-virus
> filter or something else that is altering the message after it left LISTSERV
> and before it gets to your mailbox?  There are various ways to capture
> LISTSERV's outgoing mail by piping it to a file.  Then you can be sure of
> what LISTSERV did or did not generate, uncorrupted by other possible
> influences.

Yes, it's possible that something after LISTSERV is changing the MIME 
headers, but why only for the "Undelivered mail" messages?  Other 
messages from LISTSERV that I've seen don't have this problem.

Our LISTSERV sends its e-mail via a pair of external sendmail-based SMTP 
servers.  Please give an example of how one might capture copies of the 
relevant DSNs from a production LISTSERV server, without adversely 
affecting the production service, before any other significant influence 
might corrupt the messages.  Thank you.

> The line 
> 
> 
>>Received: (from csgrpts@localhost)
>>	by oldmail.Princeton.EDU (8.13.1/8.13.1/Submit)
>> id j8F2iUGx018710	for [log in to unmask]; Wed,
> 
> 
> suggests that "csgrpts" might be some kind of application  (searches on this
> term were not productive, but several hits imply it may be some kind of web
> application.)  

csgrpts is where my colleagues and I use procmail to filter out junk 
that we don't want to see.  Anything that gets past it, including my 
original example, is passed unchanged (other than the Received headers).

Our customers have reported receiving messages from LISTSERV with the 
same problem.  Their messages never go through csgrpts, and typically go 
through only one SMTP server before reaching their destination.


> I am not sure what's going on here, but I have found (after working with
> LISTSERV for almost 15 years) that these things must be very carefully
> investigated.  What is at first claimed to be an obvious error in LISTSERV,
> often turns out to be an error somewhere else in the SMTP chain of machines
> from beginning to end of the process.
> 
> enough said for now.
> 
> -------
> If anybody cares, results of my test:
> 
> Subject: Delivery error report from MAIL03.BESTEFFORT.COM
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Message-ID: <[log in to unmask]>
> X-LSV-ListID: None
> MIME-Version: 1.0
> Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="aRHXLIKIIeCWUaUPVJaCcOZGWUXQQS"
> Return-Path: <>
> X-OriginalArrivalTime: 16 Sep 2005 00:43:03.0281 (UTC)
>                        FILETIME=[98776610:01C5BA57]
[...]

Your test produced a message with "Delivery error report from" in the 
Subject line, with a "multipart/mixed" Content-type, not one with 
"Undelivered mail" in the Subject linem with a "multipart/report" 
Content-type.  Perhaps LISTSERV generates each type of message 
differently.  Under what circumstances does LISTSERV generate each type 
of message?

LISTSERV may not be the source of the problem, but all evidence I've 
seen so far indicates that it is.  We've received no reports of any 
non-LISTSERV messages having their MIME boundaries changed, and I expect 
that we would have if some other part of our e-mail infrastructure was 
doing it.

Enough for tonight.  Thank you all, for your help with this issue.

			Alex