Re: Lyris

[Mike Nolan <nolan @ celery . tssi . com>]

> >If  every user  gets exactly  the same  message, the  task of  analyzing
> >bounced messages is a difficult one, as you need to write a parser which
> >is savvy to all the different mail systems out there, since there are so
> >many different kinds of error messages.
> 
> Well, I don't think anyone on this forum ever claimed that writing a good
> list manager was  an easy task. If  it were easy, there would  be no room
> for commercial products :-)
> 
> >But,  in almost  all  cases, bounced  mail includes  the  header of  the
> >bounced message in the error message.
> 
> Or rather, whatever the bouncing MTA  calls a "header". For many systems,
> this is actually what is left of the header after converting to the local
> proprietary  mail system.  This  may  not include  much  more than  date,
> origin, recipient and subject.

A feature I've always wanted to see in a MLM is some intelligence as to when
to delve deeper on bounces.  For example, if 'foo.com' is sending back
bounced mail that can't be traced back to a particular list subscriber, then 
on the next message send out unique messages to everybody in that domain to 
see if that helps narrow the possibilities down somewhat.

I do something like this manually every few months.  I have a shell script
that goes through my mailing lists and sends a test message to everybody,
with the exact address that I'm sending to in the Subject header and in the 
body.  99% of the time I get back a bounce that lets me find bad addresses 
even if the MTA at the other end isn't very cooperative in its bounce 
message.  On a few occasions, I've had to go into the sendmail logs to see
what message ID went to what address.  It also gives me a check on 
bad addresses at sites that refuse to follow the standards and send their 
bounces back to the author rather than to the envelope address.  I could 
see this being a 'feature' that is invoked every X messages or time interval.
--
Mike Nolan