January 2002 - Smartlist - lists.rwth-aachen.de

Those darn autoresponders...
by Paul Thomas 19 Jan '02

19 Jan '02

Howdy, I know this subject has been visited before but.... Has anyone come up with any heuristics that procmail can use to determine that a message to a mailing list from a poorly configured autoresponder (the message appears to come from an individual and does not include headers from daemons, proper Precendence: , etc) and prevent it from creating an infinite loop with the mailing list? I realize people who can't properly setup an autoresponder have no business using one and should be publicly humiliated at their local soccer stadium, however this is not an option available to me. Cheers, --Paul T. Cueman -- http://www.cuenet.com Info(a)cuenet.com -= At the speed of the Internet =-

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spam
by Jerry Sloan 19 Jan '02

19 Jan '02

Good Morning, I run a list for our tech support department that sends an auto-reply to the original sender. My problem is this e-mail address gets a boatload of spam. But when the messages come through smartlist has stripped the original message headers. Is there any way to keep the original message headers so that I can use them to block spam? Thanks in advance for any help Jerry Sloan Network/System Admin fP Technologies, Inc -- "Let us take care that age does not make more wrinkles on our spirit than on our face." Michel de Montaigne

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Forwarding issue
by Mike Goins 19 Jan '02

19 Jan '02

It's not really a smartlist issue, but more of an administrative issue. I seem to get the occasional user that subscribes under one address, but then forwards the list emails from that address to another. Unfortunately the address that message gets forwarded to gets full or disabled and the servers that handle the bounce loose the original headers along the way. This makes it hard to for the smartlist to unsub an address that it does not have. Sometimes I can find some clue in the header that lets me figure out the correct address to do it manually, but I've seem to have gotten a bounce that has little info. Does anyone have suggestion for tracking down the `pop` box that is forwarding the email?

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Re: Forwarding issue
by Richard G. Ball 19 Jan '02

19 Jan '02

On [2002-Jan-18] Charlie Summers <charlie(a)lofcom.com> wrote: [snip] > > There are various scripts out there you can use to send your probe, or you > can write a simple one yourself. Just make sure there's info in the Subject: > header field _and_ the body to give yourself a better chance of figuring out > what address went dead. > > Charlie (who nominates this for a FAQ...) Charlie, If it warrants FAQ status maybe it'd be better to include the names & contact info for a few of those scripts "out there" (a quicky google search for "email perl probe" doesn't seem to grab anything interesting). Rich

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FW: AOL email troubles?
by Aksel, Dan W 18 Jan '02

18 Jan '02

Most common problem is the user placing security restrictions to not receive internet e-mail. This is frustrating because they can send e-mail to you, but you can not reply. Dan -----Original Message----- From: Gary Funck [mailto:gary@intrepid.com] Sent: Tuesday, January 01, 2002 11:51 AM To: Smartlist(a)Lists.RWTH-Aachen.DE Cc: CueMan Subject: RE: AOL email troubles? Paul T. wrote: > -----Original Message----- > Sent: Saturday, December 01, 2001 11:08 AM > Subject: AOL email troubles? > > Hi, > > Anyone out there with AOL subscribers on your SmartList(s) not > receiving all your deliveries or maybe not being able to post > to your list from AOL? > > Thanks and happy holidays! > > --Paul T. This may provide a possible explanation: http://www.interesting-people.org/archives/interesting-people/200201/msg0006 6.html [...] >I work for a company that delivers large amounts of e-mail for Fortune-1000 >companies. > >We had a very similar problem with AOL: we started to see many of our >messages fail to arrive in AOL mailboxes even though AOL reported they were >successfully accepted for delivery. > >Sending one or two messages at a time would work flawlessly, but when >sending anything larger, some might arrive while many would not. > >After a lot of testing, we discovered AOL has some very interesting policies >regarding email delivery. > >In a nutshell, if you deliver more than some number messages to AOL within >an a certain timeframe, AOL will accept them for delivery but in actuality, >delete them without notice. The metrics AOL uses to decide what should or >should not be delivered are not published. [...] background: http://www.interesting-people.org/archives/interesting-people/200201/msg0006 1.html _______________________________________________ Smartlist mailing list Smartlist(a)lists.RWTH-Aachen.DE http://MailMan.RWTH-Aachen.DE/mailman/listinfo/smartlist

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Welcome letter
by David W. Gulley 13 Jan '02

13 Jan '02

I have a request from one of the lists that I support to provide a "Welcome Letter" introducing new members to the list! Rather than "just say no" I wondered if any of you have any ideas? The letter would be sent to the list AFTER the new user is subscribed and would read something like: Please welcome <FIRSTNAME> <LASTNAME> to the List. This would supposedly serve two purposes: Let everyone know that there is a new list member Let the new member receive an email from the list (So where do I get <FIRSTNAME> <LASTNAME>?) I've been thinking about adding a CGI form front end but thought some of the SL gurus may have dealt with something like this previously. TIA, David W. Gulley Destiny Designs

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Custom subscribe/unsubscribe messages hard linked?
by Matthew Poe 08 Jan '02

08 Jan '02

Hey! I've been on the list a few months now hoping someone will bring this up, as I've been unable to find it in the FAQ (although I have a geeky friend who tells me it's a problem he's seen before.) I run 4 comparatively small mailing lists (the biggest is about 150 subscribers.) I am hosted by nomonthlyfees.com, which seems decent most of the time, but has been really terrible about this particular problem. It's compounded by the fact that they have a web interface for subscribe/unsubscribes and charge extra for SSH access, which is not something I particularly want to purchase, since 1) it would necessitate learning how to use it, and, for the most part I get along pretty well without it and 2) I'm a poor college student. I've customized each list to send custom subscribe/unsubscribe messages. Of course, I upload these files to the directories of their respective lists. The problem is that Smartlist sends whichever sub/unsub custom message I've uploaded most recently to every subscriber who attempts to subscribe or unsubscribe, (it sends them respectively, i.e., doesn't confuse subscribe messages with unsubscribe messages) regardless of the list with which they're trying to interact. Restated, a prospective subscriber for the XYZ list gets whichever custom list subscribe message I uploaded most recently rather than the message appropriate to the list of interest. The only thing that makes sense to me is that the files are hard linked someplace, and I think I could persuade the techs at nomonthlyfees to fix the problem if I could pinpoint it more exactly. Of course, I could be wrong. Thanks in advance for any advice! Matthew Poe

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AOL email troubles?
by CueMan 02 Jan '02

02 Jan '02

Hi, Anyone out there with AOL subscribers on your SmartList(s) not receiving all your deliveries or maybe not being able to post to your list from AOL? Thanks and happy holidays! --Paul T. --

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