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Re: Strange determination of an error address in Zmailer 2.1.2
On Thu, 12 Oct 1995, John Gardiner Myers wrote:
> Matti Aarnio <mea@utu.fi> writes:
> > The Algorithm within router is such that when it needs to
> > look up for an error return address, it picks them in order:
> >
> > Sender: ...
> > Errors-To: ...
> > MAIL FROM:<...>
> >
> > ( router/rfc822.c:erraddress() )
> >
> > This, like Tom Samplonius noted, is according to RFC-822...
> > (Well, "Errors-To:" I could not find..)
>
> Absolutely incorrect. From RFC 1123, section 5.3.3:
>
> If there is a delivery failure after acceptance of a message,
> the receiver-SMTP MUST formulate and mail a notification
> message. This notification MUST be sent using a null ("<>")
> reverse path in the envelope; see Section 3.6 of RFC-821. The
> recipient of this notification SHOULD be the address from the
> envelope return path (or the Return-Path: line). However, if
> this address is null ("<>"), the receiver-SMTP MUST NOT send a
> notification. If the address is an explicit source route, it
> SHOULD be stripped down to its final hop.
>
> Transport agents should always user the envelope return path given
> in the MAIL FROM: command for notification messages.
>
> A subtlety is that when the envelope return path is null ("<>"), the
> notification should be sent to the local postmaster. Otherwise, when
> mail arrives with invalid addresses in both the forward and reverse
> paths, it will be silently discarded.
No one disagrees that error noticification should have the return path
of <>, but the question has been how to find who to send the notification to.
Yes, I'm wrong about using Sender: (if available) all the time. This is
appropiate (mostly) for non-SMTP systems that use RFC-822 messages, but this
what Zmailer seems to do all the time.
Tom