vacation autoresponders
Bill Houle
decided to check first which senders might theoretically get bombarded with
such messages. We all know what trouble a poorly done vacation program can
cause, so I thought I'd look first. My program:
ignores mailer daemons
ignores Precedence bulk/junk
ignores loops to myself
and only responds if To/Cc me
This mimics the Berkeley vacation program and in theory should be pretty
darn safe. But I found a number of "mailing lists" that would get hit.
These lists insist on addressing directly to me (instead of a list address)
and do not utilize Precedence headers. My question: is this a "they screwed
up" situation, or is there something else I could be doing to be more
net-friendly?
--bill
Norbert Bollow
> cause, so I thought I'd look first. My program:
>
> ignores mailer daemons
> ignores Precedence bulk/junk
> ignores loops to myself
> and only responds if To/Cc me
[..]
> up" situation, or is there something else I could be doing to be more
> net-friendly?
Make sure that the autoresponder will never send more than one
reply to any given address. (You'll need a simple database for
this.) This will defeat most loops.
Make sure that the autoresponder does not reply to messages with
null reverse path, since those are likely to be bounces, and you
don't want to bother remote postmasters with your vacation
messages.
Finally, if something does go wrong in spite of all the
precautions, people will want to alert the postmaster at your
host about the problem. Therefore, please make sure that someone
is handling postmaster mail even during your absence.
And then, have a great vacation!
Norbert.
--
Norbert Bollow, Zuerich, Switzerland. Backup e-mail address: N...@POBOX.COM
Bob Myers
> From: Bill Houle <bho...@conveyanced.com>
> Subject: vacation autoresponders
>
> I was just about to turn on my procmail-based vacation autoresponder when I
> decided to check first which senders might theoretically get bombarded with
> such messages. We all know what trouble a poorly done vacation program can
>
> ignores mailer daemons
> ignores Precedence bulk/junk
Precedence list, too.
--
Bob Myers InteleNet Communications, Inc.
Email: b...@InteleNet.net 18101 Von Karman Avenue, Suite 550
Phone: 714-851-8250 x227 Irvine, CA 92612
Fax: 714-851-1088 http://www.intelenet.net/
Cyndi Norman
use procmail for other things. Is there a way to simply call the vacation
program on my mail without disabling procmail while I'm away? I'm on a
UNIX system and read my mail here. Why reinvent the wheel?
Cyndi
--
_______________________________________________________________________________
"There's nothing wrong with me. Maybe there's Cyndi Norman
something wrong with the universe." (ST:TNG) cy...@consultclarity.com
http://www.consultclarity.com
_________________________ Owner of the Immune Lists http://www.best.com/~immune
Jason L Tibbitts III
BH> These lists insist on addressing directly to me (instead of a
BH> list address) and do not utilize Precedence headers.
What does the envelope sender look like? I'd ignore anything matching
/owner|request|error/i (and probably a few more).
- J<
Michael Handler
> I have a similar predictament. I love the Berkeley vacation program but I
> use procmail for other things. Is there a way to simply call the vacation
> program on my mail without disabling procmail while I'm away?
Sure, you can pipe your mail through arbitrary programs (like vacation)
via commands in your .procmailrc. At the end of your .procmailrc, after
all of your mailing list sorting recipes and the like, add this:
-- begin --
:0 c
* !^FROM_DAEMON
|/path/to/vacation
-- end --
The c flag on the first line makes the recipe a non-delivering carbon-copy
recipe; the message is sent through vacation, but then procmail continues
delivery instructions afterward, so that the mail ends up saved in your
normal inbox.
--
han...@sub-rosa.com
if you cannot conceive of better lines and better times
then let silence bury you -- midnight oil