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Path: utzoo!linus!philabs!cmcl2!floyd!clyde!ihnp4!cbosgd!mhuxi!mhuxj!mhuxl!achilles!smb
From: smb@achilles.UUCP (Steven Bellovin)
Newsgroups: net.mail
Subject: Re: Standard mail header field for mechanically generated mail?
Message-ID: <616@achilles.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 20-Sep-83 13:40:56 EDT
Article-I.D.: achilles.616
Posted: Tue Sep 20 13:40:56 1983
Date-Received: Wed, 21-Sep-83 06:51:26 EDT
References: <1694@ihnss.UUCP>
Organization: Bell Labs, Murray Hill
Lines: 15

The story about mail loops is not at all apocryphal (though it may
not have crashed the ARPAnet); I can dig up references if anyone wants.
But I know it can happen, because it did happen at UNC with a vacation
reply system I wrote....   Fortunately, mine was clock-triggered, so it
didn't send more than one message per hour.

Yes, as spanky!ka says, a vacation processor that sort should keep a list,
but that doesn't answer the more general question.  My processor excluded
mail from 'root', 'daemon', 'uucp', and a few other logins.  Other
possibilities include using the 'From' line to indicate the program,
and the 'Sender' to indicate who's responsible for it; RFC822 seems to
bless such an interpretation.


		--Steve Bellovin