On Fri, 10 Jul 1998, Jason Collins wrote:
> How do you stop an automatic reply program (like vacation on Unix)
> from causing an infinite mailing loop?
Unix vacation shouldn't do that. As far as I understand it is a well
behaved program and only sends its auto-replies when messages mean certain
criteria. (1) It should not reply to message which are of precedence,
bulk, list or junk. (2) It should not reply to messages which don't have
the individual's email address in the To or Cc line.
A majordomo mailing list message will fail both those tests, so there
should not be an auto-reply to vacation. Additionally, vacation will
not send out a new message to an address that it has recently (usually
one week) sent a message to.
In addition to what others have mentioned. (Reply-To list is usually
not a good choice for a list configuration for this and other reasons,
and using taboo_headers and taboo_body to stop the individual
autoresponder) you should shout very loudly at the postmaster of the site
that the mail is autoresponder is coming from if it is not a well behaved
autoresponder.
Well behaved autoresponders try to avoid mailling to lists in the ways
mentioned above. Badly behaved autoresponders should be purged. Scold
the postmaster at sites with badly behaved autoresponders.
-j
--
Jeffrey Goldberg +44 (0)1234 750 111 x 2826
Cranfield Computer Centre FAX 751 814
J.Goldberg@Cranfield.ac.uk http://WWW.Cranfield.ac.uk/public/cc/cc047/
Relativism is the triumph of authority over truth, convention over justice.
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