[6839] in Athena Bugs
vax 7.1H: expn (I think) and/or blanche
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU)
Wed Jan 9 04:50:33 1991
Date: Wed, 9 Jan 91 04:50:14 -0500
From: "Jonathan I. Kamens" <jik@pit-manager.MIT.EDU>
To: bdclub@ATHENA.MIT.EDU
Cc: bugs@ATHENA.MIT.EDU
In-Reply-To: bugs[6021]
A few months back, you sent in the bug report included below.
I'm afraid it is not detailed enough for us to figure out exactly what
you mean. I have seen mailing lists with incorrect addresses on them
work just fine, i.e. the incorrect address causes a bounce message to
the sender and the rest of the people on the list get the message.
Can you give an example of an incorrect address which would cause the
problems you describe, and try to give more details about exactly what
goes wrong? In particular, it would have helped if you'd included the
exact "cryptic" messages you get when you use expn to expand the list.
Jonathan Kamens
Project Athena Quality Assurance
Reference:
Date: Thu, 13 Sep 90 11:59:31 EDT
From: MIT Ballroom Dance Club <bdclub@ATHENA.MIT.EDU>
System name: e40-008-11
Type and version: CVAXSTAR 7.1H (1 update(s) to same version)
Display type: SM
What were you trying to do?
Using blanche to set up a mailing list, and expn to verify them.
What's wrong:
Invalid addresses, which include non-existing Athena users and incorrectly
formatted addresses, are not caught by blanche.
However, when the list gets to the mail server machine, the presence of
this invalid address really messes things up. Specifically, (a) if I send mail
to the list, it does not get through to most of the members (including
valid ones). (b) an "expn listname" only identifies (cryptically) that there
was some error, but does not tell you where or how many. Nor does it expand
the correct entries.
Expn -host mit.edu listname does identify the incorrectly formatted
entries, but not the invalid Athena users.
In short, the only way to guarantee (and I haven't verified that even
this will guarantee it!) that a mailing list will work is to run an expn
*individually* on every item in the list before adding it using blanche or
listmaint. This is (a) unwieldy and (b) undocumented.
(1) Ideally, blanche (and listmaint) should immediately identify
an incorrect address, and send a message that it is not being added
(identifying the offending item). This will prevent these invalid addresses
>from ever getting into the list.
However, it should continue adding the other valid members of the list (in a
"blanche -f" command).
(2) Expn (and whatever is used to expand addresses when the mail
is actually sent) should be made more robust so that if an invalid address
does get to it, it (a) identifies it (b) sends mail to the sender to that
effect (c) does not bomb on all the other valid addresses.
Please describe any relevant documentation references:
[Please replace this line with your information.]
