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List:       exim-users
Subject:    Re: [Exim] MIME message/rfc822 bounce messages (was: Ignoring bounce  errors)
From:       Philip Hazel <ph10 () cus ! cam ! ac ! uk>
Date:       1999-09-28 11:25:36
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On Tue, 28 Sep 1999, Tomas Fasth wrote:

> At a certain level, MUAs have to exchange information with MTAs. One purpose of DSN \
> is to allow MUAs to better visualize what is happening on the transportation level. \
> As long as MTAs fail to conform to any kind of standard response format, MUA \
> interaction with the user will continue to be awkward in this regard.

I can see the virtue of *a* standard response form. I'm not sure that 
DSN is it.

> Couldn't dot forward processing be regarded as a successful delivery? 

It could, but that isn't what the RFC says (if I recall correctly) and 
also, I think it would be disastrous. Lots of people these days have 
multiple forwarding of the type A->B->C->D. You don't want the sender to
get 4 "delivered" messages. (Personally, as a sender, I don't want *any* 
such messages.)

> You compared it yourself with a mini
> mailing list, quite correctly I believe. If something goes wrong with the message \
> once it passed a dot forward processing, shouldn't the postmaster be notified, not \
> the sender?

We have 6,000 users on this system and 20,000 on our biggest. If one of 
our users forwards to some new address that is or becomes broken, I
don't want to know. I certainly don't want to receive a message every
time a message comes in for this user (these people are always on a
zillion mailing lists). Let the senders be told. If they are desperate 
they can find other ways of contacting the recipients and telling them 
their forwarding is broken.

-- 
Philip Hazel            University of Cambridge Computing Service,
ph10@cus.cam.ac.uk      Cambridge, England. Phone: +44 1223 334714.


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