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.
At 2:57 PM -0500 1/6/03, Don Doumakes is rumored to have typed:
That makes sense. Clearly, though, A is somehow returning an error return to the MTA. Mr. A is an AOL subscriber.
(*sigh*) Yippee. That explains a whole lot.
The bounce message from the AOL mailer daemon to the list-request address (addresses munged) says:
<snip>
Your mail to the following recipients could not be deliveredbecause they are not accepting mail from A@aol.com: B
Whoa...other than, I think, swapping A with B (A was the bouncer, B was the bouncee, yes?), this again appears to be a really malformed mess. It's obvious AOL's filters are trusing the From: header field, but this example you've given, if complete and correct, isn't a valid bounce message. If A and B were really listeed that way, it's no wonder SmartList got confused.
Still, I'm guessing that as an AOL subscriber, A lacks the kind of tools that would make it possible to bounce more politely.
More correctly, at least. I've seen some _really_ lousy bounces from AOL. (Although lately, MSN is taking the cake for this nonsense.) I refuse to use AOL, so I don't know how their new "anti-spam" filters work, but I've seen:
----- The following addresses had permanent fatal errors ----- xxxxx@aol.com
----- Transcript of session follows ----- ... while talking to air-xf04.mail.aol.com.:
RCPT To:xxxxx@aol.com
<<< 550 xxxxx IS NOT ACCEPTING MAIL FROM THIS SENDER 550 xxxxx@aol.com... User unknown
...used as a lazy man's unsubscribe method more than once, so I expect to see interesting things coming out of AOL, MSN, and even Norton's Anti-Virus in the future (although I think Norton's just deletes mail instead of bouncing it). I should probably note that in the cases I've received the error message I list above from AOL, SmartList has found and unsubscribed the correct address. I've also not seen anything from AOL that looks exactly like the error message you've included.
I seem to be one of the few people who has SmartList send bounce copies to me, and I review them daily for the lists I maintain. I _have_ over the years seen a small number of instances where SmartList was wrong in its guess, but darned few over a whole lot of bounces.
Sooner or later this problem will be back, with a different cast of characters, and it would be nice to solve it technically.
You are likely correct, but I'd argue this is not an obvious flaw in SmartList, but rather with AOL (gee, add another one to the list). If AOL isn't giving proper session transcripts with valid 500-level errors, SmartList is kinda stuck trying to guess what address is really bouncing. I am constantly amazed at how good a job it does at that, even when the mailer sends cutsy garbage like, "Sorry it didn't work out."
The only thing I can think to do is to force the issue; I'll see if, over the next week or so, I can get a couple AOL users to help me run some tests to see if the bounce message you've seen, at least, can be duplicated.
Charlie
On Mon, Jan 06, 2003 at 1:57:01PM -0600, Don Doumakes wrote:
Clearly, though, A is somehow returning an error return to the MTA...
No, B is returning the error; see below.
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 [sic] 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
That's a standard AOL reject-all-mail-from-blahblahblah notice. It looks like ones I see all the time to my list server. The final line of the body indicates the (aol) recipient that's rejecting the mail.
Mr. A is an AOL subscriber.
Yes, as it happens. But so is Mr. B, and it's B that's generating the bounce. B (@aol.com) is "not accepting mail from A@aol.com".
I don't have an informed opinion on whether this is a malformed bounce. (Do you?)
Well, it's kind of nasty in that the offending party, B@aol.com, is not listed as an RFC822 address, but simply as "B" and the recipient is supposed to devine the @aol.com part from context. So, you might say it's "malformed" but it's the way AOL has chosen to do it. At least the header is formed correctly, assuming that "from: " line was really a "From: " line. :)
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.
Then SmartList did the right thing. Bravo!
You're probably using a much more recent version of SL than I am; my ISP is still on procmail3.10 and its SL version (I forget which). I seem to recall that these things get delivered straight to me as maintainer unprocessed, and I get to remove B myself.
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.
I'm totally confused by the statement "I have indeed replaced A with B". Nevertheless, it sounds as though your version of SmartList is handling these lame bounces correctly. Your job as maintainer should be to explain to B, if/when he requests renewal of his subscription, that he risks losing his subscription to your list repeatedly if he insists on using AOL's brain-dead reject system, and maybe he'd like to complain to the caring folks at AOL to smarten up their mailer so that it doesn't send refusal notices to mailing list admin addresses, but rather to the parties being rejected. On the other hand, sending delivery status notices to From: addrs is generally not a good idea either. Maybe just reject them silently.
Jim
On [2003-Jan-06] Jim Osborn jimo@eskimo.com wrote: [snip]
On the other hand, sending delivery status notices to From: addrs is generally not a good idea either. Maybe just reject them silently.
This last suggestion is the one I have implemented because I too get a number of these so-called bounces. If I were more AR than I is I'd have a whole separate set of processing routines for everything connected with AOL ...&%^$#*@&...
Rich
smartlist@lists.rwth-aachen.de
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Charlie Summers -
Don Doumakes -
Jim Osborn -
Richard G. Ball