[1581] in Moira
Re: some suggested mailhub.gen changes
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Mark V. Silis)
Wed Jun 14 00:47:00 2000
Message-Id: <200006140446.AAA05512@chicago.mit.edu>
To: tom@MIT.EDU, mark@MIT.EDU
Cc: zacheiss@MIT.EDU, moiradev@MIT.EDU, postmaster@MIT.EDU
Date: Wed, 14 Jun 2000 00:46:51 EDT
From: "Mark V. Silis" <mark@MIT.EDU>
I went ahead and did some testing with this configuration, having
my mit.edu MX record pointed at the test mailer with the non-pathched sendmail,
and garry's new aliases file. This does in fact correct the problem. Here's
why: When you send to a list that has a fully expanded owner list, sendmail
doesn't do a look up on the list and end up setting the return-path to the
same thing again. What it actually ends up setting it to is <> since
owner-<listname> has no owner, and that ends any possible mailing loop.
Here is an example, network is a self owned list with an entry for which
the mailers cannot deliver. Someone sends mail to network, mail bounces to
the Return-Path: <owner-network@mit.edu>, which of course will bounce again
since that list is simply comprised of the members of network, but this
time we have Return-Path: <> which can never loop back! As long as the
Return-Path is always set to owner-<listname> and not simply the expansion of
owner-<listname> ie (owner-network vs. network) looping bugs will be avoided.
And garry's patch does in fact enforce this behaviour by setting
owner-<listname> to be a full expansion of the list membership.
So I would say as long as we can prevent people from creating owner-<listname>
lists, and maybe cleanup the ones out there there to be sure, that this is a
safe solution.
-- Mark
