Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!decwrl!synoptics!bionet!turbo.bio.net!lear From: lear@turbo.bio.net (Eliot) Newsgroups: comp.mail.sendmail Subject: Re: Robust mail redistribution Message-ID: Date: 11 Oct 90 15:13:09 GMT References: <1990Oct10.234421.8677@nntp-server.caltech.edu> Organization: GenBank Computing Resource for Mol. Biology Lines: 29 When dealing with large mailing lists, the big stickler is how to handle errors, because with large mailing lists there will *ALWAYS* be problems with somebody's host somewhere. The goal is to redirect away from the author any error on which he cannot act. This is best accomplished by resetting the return-path in the ENVELOPE (see RFC 822 and RFC 1123) to be that of mailing-list-request, an address where all the bounces should go. With sendmail, you would achieve this end by using the aliases file in the following way: real-mailing-list-file: :include: /usr/local/mlists/mailing-list mailing-list-request: you mailing-list: "|/usr/lib/sendmail -fmailing-list-request real-mailing-list-file" The only people who will see bounces other than you will be those people on your host who mail off to the list. This is because sendmail's security mechanism will not allow local ``untrusted'' users to set the return-path. N.B. when you set the return-path, you are *NOT* setting the ``From:'' RFC822 header. It is important to leave the user's headers alone when exploding a mailing list. -- Eliot Lear [lear@turbo.bio.net]