This is off topic. But as it affects all of the people who actively write on the list, I felt it appropriate to address the issue here. Dear all, When you leave for holidays, PLEASE check before installing any auto- responders that your system is configured (or at least CAN be configured and you have done that personally) NOT to reply to messages that are not personal to you, such as messages you receive from mailing lists whose member you are. It seems to be that MS Exchange, Lotus Notes, cc:Mail, Novell GroupWise, just about anything else but vacation(1) on UNIX works **** WRONG **** in this respect. Some of the correct behaviour can be gleaned from the manual pages to vacation, but I have no idea whether those rules can be applied to all mail systems. The reason for this is simply that I do not wish to receive a gazillion autoreplies in my mailbox from members of mailing lists every time I decide to put in my $.02 on a list. It's worse than spam. I am NOT INTERESTED in knowing whether Xxxx Xxxxxxxx in Xyzzy Corporation in Northsouth Mxyzptlkland reads my latest post to ssh/bugtraq/whatever only after he/she/it returns from holidays. -- Atro Tossavainen (Mr.), Systems Analyst, contact info at URL, +358-9-19158939 The Institute of Biotechnology at the University of Helsinki, Finland employs me, but my opinions are my own. They are welcome to them, if they want them. < URL : http : / / www . iki . fi / atro . tossavainen / >
