[15998] in Athena Bugs
Re: Potential future problem with auto-acks
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Steven Wade Neiterman)
Fri Jun 26 18:24:00 1998
In-Reply-To: <199806261916.PAA01889@shadow.med.unc.edu>
Date: Fri, 26 Jun 1998 18:28:11 -0400
To: Matt Braun <matt@MIT.EDU>, tooltime@MIT.EDU, olc-bugs@MIT.EDU
From: Steven Wade Neiterman <wade@MIT.EDU>
Cc: postmaster@MIT.EDU
This is a good point.
I have some protection, but would welcome any audit you could provide.
The "casetracker" service has an email stop list. Thus, mail from
"daemon@mit.edu", "mailer-daemon@mit.edu" are rejected.
Also, any mail sent from "casetracker" (e.g. team-usa.mit.edu) has a
x-header:Oracle. Incoming mail with this same x-header is refused as well
as incoming mail sent from the machine team-usa. This should prevent
casetracker sending mail back to it'self, a.k.a. creating a loop.
I am open to any other ideas.
..Steve
At 3:16 PM -0400 6/26/98, Matt Braun wrote:
>This is not a bug report...just a notice of a potential 'interaction'.
>
>I noticed the message below in in hotine[43981]. This was the result of
>someone (Lou in this case) using the hd hotline tool forwarded mail to
>olc@mit.edu which initiates a log. The problem is that matisse, the OLC
>server sends a reply which if hotline@team-usa were configured the same as
>computing-help, would generate an automatic reply and so forth. Two things
>kept this infinite loop from happening
>
>1. The hotline category does not yet send auto-acks like computing-help
>
>2. matisse sends its mail from daemon@mit.edu
>
>Although communication between our support systems is good...too much
>communication could be a bad thing (like an infinite email loop). This should
>be kept in mind when systems that automatically reply to mail are set up.
>Even though there is no supported way to do 'vacation' on Athena, people do
>periodically use such things and our tools should be able to deal robustly.
>
> Matt
>
>
>Subject: Your mail to olc-other
>From: <daemon@MIT.EDU>
>Date: Fri, 26 Jun 1998 14:50:33 -0400 (EDT)
>To: hotline@MIT.EDU
>
>Hello,
>
> Your question has been entered into the on-line consulting
>system (olc). A consultant will send you a reply, either directly
>through olc if you are logged in to athena, or via mail. To send
>follow-up messages, please login and type:
>
> olc
>
>at your athena% prompt, and then:
>
> send
>
>at the olc> prompt.
>
>You can also send follow-up messages via email to olc-other@mit.edu
>
>If you would like to speak with a consultant directly, please call
>253-4435 or stop by building N42.
>
> Thank you for using OLC!
>
> Athena Consulting
>
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