Quoting Racer X ([EMAIL PROTECTED]):
> I'm toying with the idea of setting up an autoresponder for "postmaster@"
> mail. Reason: there's too many people, both customers and outsiders, who
> don't read the part about "this is the qmail program" and attempt to reply
> to postmaster with questions. (Granted, they don't read the abuse
> autoresponder either, particularly the part about "this is an autogenerated
> message", but at least this way they know they won't be getting a personal
> response...)
>
> Basically, I'd like to set up an autoresponder that looks for messages to
> postmaster, and sends the autoreply if the message is not also FROM
> postmaster (or mailerdaemon, or whatever). Are there any pitfalls involved
> in setting this kind of thing up for "important" addresses like postmaster?
Yeah, unfortunately, there are.
We had a major problem here once when NAI.COM, whose network admins
you would think were clueful, sent an email to an invalid address
here. Well, their autoresponder sent an email to
[EMAIL PROTECTED], and our autoresponder sent one back to them.
Now, of course, I set this up to send the autoresponse with a NULL
return path; it didn't make a damn bit of difference because NAI's
responder looked at what was in the From header. It really pissed me
off.
When I came into work on a Saturday morning because my pager was
beeping, I discovered more than 4,000 queued emails to MAILER-DAEMON.
Emails to NAI did not elicit a response (well, my email to them wasn't
exactly _nice_ ;).
Except for that one incident and a couple other minor ones, it hasn't
been a big deal. Our autoresponse basically tells them that the
qmail-send program isn't a human, and to send questions to support.
Make sure to not look at what's in From to figure out how to deal
with the message. Look at the return path!
Incidentally, did you mean email sent to MAILER-DAEMON or really
to postmaster?
Aaron
