Re: [Mailman-Users] Using mailman to take care of mailer-demons
On Tue, 2002-01-15 at 23:22, Barry A. Warsaw wrote: A special place in hell is reserved for the authors of MSExchange who not only decided to roll their own, but also made the brilliant decision to include absolutely nothing in the bounce message which even hints at the remotest morsel of a clue as to the intended recipient. VERP to the rescue! They can have a cubicle next to that I've had reserved for the authors of Lotus notes (1995ish vintage) which should *never* have been allowed to send mail within 100 miles of an internet connected machine. Nigel. -- [ Nigel Metheringham [EMAIL PROTECTED] ] [ Phone: +44 1423 85 Fax +44 1423 858866 ] [ - Comments in this message are my own and not ITO opinion/policy - ] -- Mailman-Users maillist - [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/mailman-users
Re: [Mailman-Users] Using mailman to take care of mailer-demons
Hi Jon, * Jon Carnes [EMAIL PROTECTED] [2002-01-14 19:00:41]: So the problem is that you want a list of the email addresses that are undeliverable, so they can be removed from the database (either manually or via a script). Right. Mailman does some of this. You can read the ~mailman/logs/bounce log file and see some of the mails that are bouncing (and why). Mailman handles these bounces automatically for you (based on the values that put in config for the list) - removing the bad addresses from Mailman's database. Thats perfect. Other bounces (that come back in a non-standard format that Mailman can't interpret), will be posted to the admin for handling (assuming you have the list set so that only members or admin's can post). These messages are stored in ~mailman/data/.. How do you define other bounces? Would a normal e-mail sent to the address go into this category? In that case, it doesn't work exactly like I want it to - normal e-mails sent to the address should not be changed, they should just be bounced to a defined address so he/she can take care of replying to the e-mail. Thanks. - Morten. -- Morten Brix Pedersen [EMAIL PROTECTED] Daily Rush System Administrator www.wtf.dk -- Mailman-Users maillist - [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/mailman-users
Re: [Mailman-Users] Using mailman to take care of mailer-demons
Other bounces (that come back in a non-standard format that Mailman can't interpret), will be posted to the admin for handling (assuming you have the list set so that only members or admin's can post). These messages are stored in ~mailman/data/.. How do you define other bounces? Would a normal e-mail sent to the address go into this category? In that case, it doesn't work exactly like I want it to - normal e-mails sent to the address should not be changed, they should just be bounced to a defined address so he/she can take care of replying to the e-mail. Thanks. - Morten. Some email systems send bounces from some weird addresses (as apposed to Mailer-Daemon, or some such address). As such, Mailman may not be able to interpret that the email is a bounce. Mailman may simply interpret the mail as a reply. There is a whole section in Mailman that is devoted to identifying different types of bounces. The current list includes bounces from: Compuserve, Exim, Groupwise, Microsoft, Netscape, Postfix, SMTP, Smail, Yahoo, etc... But folks use a wild number of differing Mailservers (like Lotus Notes, Connect2, etc...). If they don't use a standard bounce format, and the bounce format they use has not been added to ~mailman/Mailman/Bouncers/.. then the message that comes back is seen as a reply from a user that is not on the list. You will have to monitor the messages that come back into the list. It's really not too hard. If a non-list user replies to every single message that goes out in a day (assuming a high volume list), that user is probably a bounce. The hard part can be tracing down the actual email address on your list that is causing the bounce Hope this help - Jon Carnes -- Mailman-Users maillist - [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/mailman-users
Re: [Mailman-Users] Using mailman to take care of mailer-demons
On Tue, 15 Jan 2002 15:18:36 -0500 Jon Carnes [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Some email systems send bounces from some weird addresses (as apposed to Mailer-Daemon, or some such address). A bounce is sole identified by having a null return address in the envelope, and by nothing else. None of the headers on a message are significant in determining if a given message is a bounce, Not From: not To:, none of them. As such, Mailman may not be able to interpret that the email is a bounce. The problem is that Mailman attempts the parse the body of a bounce to determine subscriber address. As the message body format is not standardised this is an error prone process (which also explains the attraction of VERP). Mailman may simply interpret the mail as a reply. Not if it has a null return-to envelope. Guaranteed. There is a whole section in Mailman that is devoted to identifying different types of bounces. The current list includes bounces from: Compuserve, Exim, Groupwise, Microsoft, Netscape, Postfix, SMTP, Smail, Yahoo, etc... Right. That's the message body parsing stuff, not the bounce determination code. But folks use a wild number of differing Mailservers (like Lotus Notes, Connect2, etc...). If they don't use a standard bounce format, and the bounce format they use has not been added to ~mailman/Mailman/Bouncers/.. then the message that comes back is seen as a reply from a user that is not on the list. Nope, not unless the MTA in question grossly violates the RFCs and uses a non-null return address. -- J C Lawrence -(*)Satan, oscillate my metallic sonatas. [EMAIL PROTECTED] He lived as a devil, eh? http://www.kanga.nu/~claw/ Evil is a name of a foeman, as I live. -- Mailman-Users maillist - [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/mailman-users
Re: [Mailman-Users] Using mailman to take care of mailer-demons
JCL == J C Lawrence [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: JCL The problem is that Mailman attempts the parse the body of a JCL bounce to determine subscriber address. As the message body JCL format is not standardised this is an error prone process JCL (which also explains the attraction of VERP). Actually, the bounce format /is/ standardized in RFC 1894, i.e. Delivery Status Notifications (DSN), and of course Mailman groks DSN. It's just that many MTA authors hate this RFC for being overly complex (can't completely blame them), and decide to roll their own instead. VERP works because of RFC 2821 which they can't ignore! A special place in hell is reserved for the authors of MSExchange who not only decided to roll their own, but also made the brilliant decision to include absolutely nothing in the bounce message which even hints at the remotest morsel of a clue as to the intended recipient. VERP to the rescue! -Barry -- Mailman-Users maillist - [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/mailman-users
Re: [Mailman-Users] Using mailman to take care of mailer-demons
On Tue, 15 Jan 2002 18:22:19 -0500 Barry A Warsaw [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: JCL == J C Lawrence [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: The problem is that Mailman attempts the parse the body of a bounce to determine subscriber address. As the message body format is not standardised this is an error prone process (which also explains the attraction of VERP). Actually, the bounce format /is/ standardized in RFC 1894, i.e. Delivery Status Notifications (DSN), and of course Mailman groks DSN. I knew I should have added an in practice there, but by the time I thought of that I got distracted by a phone call, hit send, and, well... A special place in hell is reserved for the authors of MSExchange who not only decided to roll their own, but also made the brilliant decision to include absolutely nothing in the bounce message which even hints at the remotest morsel of a clue as to the intended recipient. Aye, so I've been noticing. Actively wishes yet again he'd configured his MTAs to auto-bounce all Exchange connections upon receipt -- J C Lawrence -(*)Satan, oscillate my metallic sonatas. [EMAIL PROTECTED] He lived as a devil, eh? http://www.kanga.nu/~claw/ Evil is a name of a foeman, as I live. -- Mailman-Users maillist - [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/mailman-users
Re: [Mailman-Users] Using mailman to take care of mailer-demons
JCL == J C Lawrence [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: JCL I knew I should have added an in practice there, but by the JCL time I thought of that I got distracted by a phone call, hit JCL send, and, well... Yeah, I knew you knew, JC. :) JCL Actively wishes yet again he'd configured his MTAs to JCL auto-bounce all Exchange connections upon receipt Not a bad idea at all. -Barry -- Mailman-Users maillist - [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/mailman-users
Re: [Mailman-Users] Using mailman to take care of mailer-demons
aw == alex wetmore [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: aw Huh? Microsoft Exchange 2000 (you didn't specify a version, aw assuming you are talking about the latest version) sends RFC aw 1894 complaint NDRs. Dunno, but I'll have to look more closely when [EMAIL PROTECTED] gets an urecognizable bounce from an Exchange server. :) -Barry -- Mailman-Users maillist - [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/mailman-users
[Mailman-Users] Using mailman to take care of mailer-demons
Hi, At my company, we have a rather big amount of websites where users can subscribe to newsletters and more. Now we are having the problem that more than 3000 messages are coming back as mailer demons, and a person has to delete these e-mails automatically. All the e-mail addresses lies in an Oracle database. Question: Is it possible to set up Mailman to do this?: 1) When a mailer-demon is received for the Xth time, Mailman executes a program to delete the user from our Oracle database (and delete it from Mailmans database) 2) All e-mails not being mailer-demons, should still go through to the right person. That is, if an e-mail is being sent to [EMAIL PROTECTED], then mailer-demons should be filtered of, and normal e-mails should still be sent to the appropriate person. Thanks in advance. - Morten. -- Mailman-Users maillist - [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/mailman-users
Re: [Mailman-Users] Using mailman to take care of mailer-demons
So the problem is that you want a list of the email addresses that are undeliverable, so they can be removed from the database (either manually or via a script). Mailman does some of this. You can read the ~mailman/logs/bounce log file and see some of the mails that are bouncing (and why). Mailman handles these bounces automatically for you (based on the values that put in config for the list) - removing the bad addresses from Mailman's database. Other bounces (that come back in a non-standard format that Mailman can't interpret), will be posted to the admin for handling (assuming you have the list set so that only members or admin's can post). These messages are stored in ~mailman/data/.. You should be able to scan the bounce log file daily and pluck out email addresses that are bad. You should also be able to scan the held messages in ~mailman/data/.. and pluck out the ones that are bounces. The syntax of a script to do that on a daily basis is pretty simple. You could then feed that list of bad addresses into a script that flags them in your oracle database. Note: some folks have reported that Mailman drops certain bounces. In otherwords, they just disappear. I haven't seen that kind of behavior, but if it is true, then you will miss some of the bounces that come back, and you will do better to simply run a email checking program. There are several versions available. You feed the program a list of email addresses, and it gives you back a list of bad email addresses and good email addresses. The address checking program opens up a message envelope with a mail server and act as though it is going to drop off a piece of mail for the user in question. If the server okays it, then the program simply stops talking to the server and no message is sent. If the server rejects the address, the program marks the address as bad. Again no message is sent. You will get some false positives from this, but it does works for a majority of bad addresses. Hope this helps - Jon Carnes - Original Message - From: Morten Brix Pedersen [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Monday, January 14, 2002 9:20 AM Subject: [Mailman-Users] Using mailman to take care of mailer-demons Hi, At my company, we have a rather big amount of websites where users can subscribe to newsletters and more. Now we are having the problem that more than 3000 messages are coming back as mailer demons, and a person has to delete these e-mails automatically. All the e-mail addresses lies in an Oracle database. Question: Is it possible to set up Mailman to do this?: 1) When a mailer-demon is received for the Xth time, Mailman executes a program to delete the user from our Oracle database (and delete it from Mailmans database) 2) All e-mails not being mailer-demons, should still go through to the right person. That is, if an e-mail is being sent to [EMAIL PROTECTED], then mailer-demons should be filtered of, and normal e-mails should still be sent to the appropriate person. Thanks in advance. - Morten. -- Mailman-Users maillist - [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/mailman-users -- Mailman-Users maillist - [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/mailman-users
