Peter van Dijk writes:
> VERY weird.. why do I get this bounce?
You're seeing the combination of two problems: an RFC 1123 violation in
sendmail and a shortsighted design decision in fetchmail.
Background: If an MTA can't deliver a message, it sends a bounce back to
the message's return path. Mailing lists set the return path to a
mailing list manager who can deal with subscriber delivery failures.
sendmail can be, and often is, configured to throw away the return path
when it stores a message in a mailbox. This violates RFC 1123, section
5.2.8. Correcting this behavior means changing one flag in the Mlocal
line in sendmail.cf.
fetchmail retrieves messages from a mailbox. It incorrectly copies the
>From line to the return path. The result is exactly what you're seeing:
subsequent bounces of mailing-list messages are sent to the wrong place.
We'll be stuck with this problem for a long time.
fetchmail _should have_ required a return path from sendmail. But then
Eric Raymond would have had to deal with complaints from users whose
ISPs don't provide the return path. ``Why don't you just copy the From
line? I'm not going to bounce things anyway!''
Probably Eric Raymond considers this to be a good tradeoff. He's saved
time and gained users. Why should he care if you suffer?
---Dan
