On 2003.01.06 11:23 Charlie Summers wrote:
It's unlikely he's "bouncing" mail through his SMTP server; I could, for example, add your address to sendmail's access file as a REJECT, but your list messages would still get through, since when the list distributes a message _it_ is the envelope sender, not you. Looks more like A is doing something with procmail, or worse some moronic Windoze application that trusts the From: header field.
That makes sense. Clearly, though, A is somehow returning an error return to the MTA. Mr. A is an AOL subscriber. The bounce message from the AOL mailer daemon to the list-request address (addresses munged) says:
From MAILER-DAEMON@mymachine.mydomain.net Fri Jan 3 07:58:09 2003 Return-Path: <MAILER-DAEMON@mymachine.mydomain.net> Received: from omr-d03.mx.aol.com (omr-d03.mx.aol.com [205.188.159.1]) by mymachine.mydomain.net (8.11.6/8.11.2) with ESMTP id h03Dw4602881 for <mylist-request@mydomain.net>; Fri, 3 Jan 2003 07:58:04 -0600 Received: from air-xi03.mail.aol.com (air-xi03.mail.aol.com [172.20.116.3]) by omr-d03.mx.aol.com (v86_r1.15) with ESMTP id RELAYIN10-0103085745; Fri, 03 Jan 2003 08:57:45 -0500 from: Mail Delivery Subsystem <MAILER-DAEMON@aol.com> Date: Fri, 3 Jan 2003 08:55:58 EST To: <mylist-request@mydomain.net> Subject: Mail Delivery Problem Mailer: AIRmail [v90.10] Message-ID: <200301030857.10IdEFUa06586@omr-d03.mx.aol.com> Your mail to the following recipients could not be delivered because they are not accepting mail from A@aol.com: B
I don't have an informed opinion on whether this is a malformed bounce. (Do you?) In any case, B was eventually told: Your mail address B has been removed from the mylist@mydomain.net mailinglist. It generated an excessive amount of bounced mails.
Your specific problem doesn't seem to call for a technical solution, but rather a social one. My solution would be, as listmaster, to reinstate B and immediately unsubscribe A until A bought a clue on how to tell the difference between Return-Path: and From:.
The suggestion at a social solution is well taken, and I have indeed replaced A with B. Still, I'm guessing that as an AOL subscriber, A lacks the kind of tools that would make it possible to bounce more politely. Sooner or later this problem will be back, with a different cast of characters, and it would be nice to solve it technically. -- Don Doumakes