At 6:24 AM +0100 4/18/99, Jeffrey Goldberg wrote:
>> i thought the general wisdom was that Errors-To: was useless, in
>> fact down right harmful, though i can't seem to recall the specifics.
>
> I don't know about harmful, but it certainly is useless.
Modern sendmails (since sendmail 8?) are programmed to ignore
errors-to, unless it's specifically turned on.
If you look in the sendmail README, it specifically says that
Errors-To violates RFC1123, which is at
<http://www.faqs.org/rfcs/rfc1123.html>. The specific paragraphs are
5.3.7(e) and 5.3.7(f).
If you use "errors-to", all you'll do is get mail routed back from
those sites that are out of spec with the RFCs. Since the vast
majority of the internet rides on the back of sendmail, depending on
errors-to will fail for all by the minority of sites that haven't
figured out how to run a mail server compliant with standards that
are a decade old. (I know, this is the internet. We can't expect
people to adopt standards that quickly...)
Now, having said that -- I've seriously considered adding an
Errors-To line to my mail lists, specifically to deal with those
sites that *do* return mail in non-conforming ways. They're a small
minority of sites, but in my experience, they seem to be the ones
most likely to start mail loops, return mail as the original poster,
send mail to root, postmaster, or any damn address EXCEPT the one we
specified in the envelope, and generally make our lives crazy as
admins. Adding the errors-to may be a way to get some of this rogue
bounce mail to behave. I may try that in one of my next mailings,
point it to some specific, unique address, and see what happens.
But the bottom line -- errors-to won't do what was being asked of it
here. It might have six or seven years ago, but most mail is now
handled by mailers that use the envelope and not Errors-to. the
simple fact that sendmail doesn't do it is enough -- it's the 800
pound gorilla of SMTP, so either you build your system to cooperate
with sendmail, or you'll find it won't work...
--
Chuq Von Rospach (Hockey fan? <http://www.plaidworks.com/hockey/>)
Apple Mail List Gnome (mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED])
Plaidworks Consulting (mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED])
<http://www.plaidworks.com/> + <http://www.lists.apple.com/>
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