Forum OpenACS Development: Re: Problems delivering mail due to invalid bounce email address

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2: Re: Problems delivering mail due to invalid bounce email address (response to 1)
Posted by Gustaf Neumann on 09/16/14 08:58 AM
Klaus,

When reading the documentation of acs-mail-lite [1], doing so would break the bounce mail processing. acs-mail-lite seems to implement a scheme called VERP, which requires an adjusted mail configuration to accept such mails (see as well [1], there is more e.g. in [3]).

Can this be the problem on your configuration?

all the best
-gustaf

[1] https://openacs.org/doc/acs-mail-lite/
[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Variable_envelope_return_path
[3] http://stackoverflow.com/questions/9104404/detecting-bounced-messages-by-return-path-header

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3: Re: Problems delivering mail due to invalid bounce email address (response to 2)
Posted by Klaus Hofeditz on 09/16/14 03:15 PM
Hi Gustav,
thanks for pointing this out.

Such measure would indeed make the automatic handling of bounces impossible. Then again such feature is not required in all cases and an additional configuration option might eliminate some of the complexity of an initial mail set up.

Next time the issue comes up I'll play with the parameters to see if I can produce an "acceptable" sender address.
However, this seems to be only necessary in scenarios where

a) External Mail Providers have very rigid policies or
b) Company policies prevent changes in local mail server configurations

Thanks Gustaf - very accurate and helpful as always!

Cheers
Klaus

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4: Re: Problems delivering mail due to invalid bounce email address (response to 3)
Posted by Gustaf Neumann on 09/16/14 04:23 PM
i have no experience with buunce mail processing, but as i understand it the intention of the modified sendmail file (on the site where OpenACS is running) is to allow the mangled email addresses. Point (a) should not be an issue, but point (b) certainly (if a user can run an OpenACS instance, but cannot not change the mail configuration, and/or is not allowed to run a mail server).

An option to deactivate automated bounce processing and using a fixed mail-bounce address make sense in such situations.