On 06-May-98 Hubert Mantel wrote:

On Tue, 5 May 1998, Braden N. McDaniel wrote:

...

Would refusing non-subscriber submissions curb this at all?

Yes, but this would cause other problems: Several people are posting from another account than they subscribed, so this would become impossible.

Agreed! I co-run a list where for "political" reasons we have to impose this constraint. We regularly have to rescue people who find themselves unable to post (usually because their local sysadmins have altered their email alias or the like -- why DO these guys keep moving the furniture around?). Not a reasonable option for an "ordinary" list (unless you get heavy spam).

...

Yeah, I know this isn't you guys' fault--but nonetheless, it's gotten rather ridiculous. I seem still to be receiving the backed-up notifications even now.

Yes, it's bad. But there are not only mails in our queue but also at surf.be

I've known much worse -- remembering one night when the Linux-Development-Apps (IIRC) digest got into a loop with a screwed site in Australia which sent the whole digest (about 200K in the first instance) back to the digestifier which then ... (in ever-larger copies)! My local Univ mailhost then normally had about 20MB free space on /var/spool/mail which soon filled up with this stuff. After unsubscribing from the digest I then sat up until about 4am deleting further copies until the backlog was cleared. The digest manager later wrote to me that his own mail spool filled with over 100MB until his server folded under the weight. On a practical note: suse-linux is served by majordomo, and I don't know if MD has the facility: but the above "political" list runs on LISTSERV which can be set to detect the presence of the list address occurring later in the message, resulting in the message then being returned to the originating site as a "possible mailloop", and it doesn't get sent to the list. This has its own problems (if a user's mailer incorrectly quotes headers in the included message-copy in a reply, then the same happens -- which is not what the replier intended, but since they shouldn't do that in the first place it's only right that it should bounce back to them so that they can get it put right at their end). This resource is very effective at detecting attempts to send a message back to the list. It also means that such cases can be forwarded to the postmaster at the offending site, which is where they should end up: let the manager of the bad site get a full mailbox, instead of everybody else. However, I noticed that someone's attempt to cc: to postmaster@surf.be also got bounced on the grounds that it couldn't be delivered to that address either, even though the bounce was apparently sent back by "postmaster@surf.be". That is some mean site ... On another practical note: All you guys who mailed to the list while this was in full swing only made the problem worse since all your messages joined the mail-loop stream! Mail-loops are rare, but when they occur it is a VERY unstable situation. Correct action is inaction: good-humouredly, do nothing; and wait for the managers to clear it up. If (as in the case I described above) you feel you HAVE to unsubscribe, then take care to send your command to the admin service of the list (in this case majordomo@suse.com, as appended to all the suse-linux mails ... ). Even then, it may be some time before the backlog runs dry. Remember that even list managers sometimes sleep: disasters can build up unnoticed overnight (in some other timezone than your own ... ). Detection and correction may take a little time. A mail-loop is almost always arises through someone else's fault, so don't blast off blame to the wrong address. Best wishes to all, and thanks to Bodo Bauer and colleagues for breaking the loop. Ted. -------------------------------------------------------------------- E-Mail: (Ted Harding) Date: 06-May-98 Time: 12:40:45 -------------------------------------------------------------------- -- To get out of this list, please send email to majordomo@suse.com with this text in its body: unsubscribe suse-linux-e

Hubert Mantel wrote:

Hi,

On Tue, 5 May 1998, Braden N. McDaniel wrote:

...

Would refusing non-subscriber submissions curb this at all?

Yes, but this would cause other problems: Several people are posting from another account than they subscribed, so this would become impossible.

I appreciate that possibility. For the risks: Well, I've tried procmail and I think I've to file all those RE: messages quoting the whole rubbish to the /dev/zero folder ;-)

...

Yeah, I know this isn't you guys' fault--but nonetheless, it's gotten rather ridiculous. I seem still to be receiving the backed-up notifications even now.

Yes, it's bad. But there are not only mails in our queue but also at surf.be ;-(

...

Prismatic Booger Braden N. McDaniel, braden@shadow.net <<A HREF="http://www.shadow.net/0.000000E+00braden/"><A HREF="http://www.shadow.net/0.000000E+00braden/</A">http://www.shadow.net/0.000000E+00braden/>

Hubert

PS: Some month ago somebody did set up a procmail file that responded to _every_ mail of the german list. In one night this guy did produce more than 100.000 mails. It took more than a day to get rid of them (apparently he was connecting via UUCP, so mails were coming in quite some time after unsubscribing him).

Oh, I remember him. Think he had to buy a free beer for everyone on the list. ;-) Wanted to be wise, tell everybody that unsubscribed into the list to unsubscribe at majordomo (hello Patrick are you still with the list ;-)) with his procmail. unfortunetely the dreadful words appear in every mail... Jürgen -- ========================================== __ _ Jürgen Braukmann e-mail: brauki@cww.de | / / (_)__ __ ____ __ Tel: 0201-743648 dk4jb@db0qs.#nrw.deu.eu | / /__/ / _ \/ // /\ \/ / ========================================== /____/_/_//_/\_,_/ /_/\_\ -- To get out of this list, please send email to majordomo@suse.com with this text in its body: unsubscribe suse-linux-e

Hi, On Wed, 6 May 1998, vic wrote:

just spam the serversending...wouldin't that wake them up????i dunno it's their fault(i dunno all the technical params)sorry it just seems that the server should be alerted of a bounce

The complaints to postmaster@surf.be did bounce, too.

yours truly,

#FrAcTeL23#

Hubert -- To get out of this list, please send email to majordomo@suse.com with this text in its body: unsubscribe suse-linux-e

Braden N. McDaniel wrote: > the following has happened:

...

Mail to Jean-Michel_Dossogne@f7111.surf.be could not be delivered due to an error on their site. Their mailsystem is misconfigured and ignores the Return-Path which is to be used for error notifications. So the bounced mail did not go to the list maintainer, but to the list itself. And therefore it got sent to Jean-Michel_Dossogne@f7111.surf.be again and so on. A classic mail loop which happens on many mailing lists from time to time.

Yeppers! The only solution that I found to "skip" all those bounced messages is to go into netscapes Edit Mail Filters setup and create a filter to delete any message that contains "Bounced" in the subject line. Not a real good solution as it still takes up some bandwidth to download all that junk mail, but at least I don't have to manually delete them ;-0 -- cya l8r Leon McClatchey <A HREF="mailto:leonmcclatchey@homemail.com">mailto:leonmcclatchey@homemail.com</A> Party on Linux:-) -- To get out of this list, please send email to majordomo@suse.com with this text in its body: unsubscribe suse-linux-e

Jim Hodgers wrote:

At 11:19 PM 5/6/98 -0500, you wrote:

...

Yeppers! The only solution that I found to "skip" all those bounced messages is to go into netscapes Edit Mail Filters setup and create a filter to delete any message that contains "Bounced" in the subject line. Not a real good solution as it still takes up some bandwidth to download all that junk mail, but at least I don't have to manually delete them ;-0

Easy solution which avoids long downkoad times is to telnet to your ISP, use elm on thier site to delete the bounces, then dl the rest.

As long as telnet is possible, or worst of all, the mail server is not "limping" with NT....

Jim

Juergen -- ========================================== __ _ Jürgen Braukmann e-mail: brauki@cww.de | / / (_)__ __ ____ __ Tel: 0201-743648 dk4jb@db0qs.#nrw.deu.eu | / /__/ / _ \/ // /\ \/ / ========================================== /____/_/_//_/\_,_/ /_/\_\ -- To get out of this list, please send email to majordomo@suse.com with this text in its body: unsubscribe suse-linux-e