[Mimedefang] auto reply / vacation

Michiel Brandenburg apex at xepa.nl
Tue Feb 2 04:18:43 EST 2010


On 2-2-2010 8:39, ml ml wrote:

>> Yes:  DON'T.  There are enough problems with existing autoresponders out there.
idd do not try to reinvent the wheel, there are plenty of autoresponders 
out there, some better than others, but nearly all of them have their 
quirks.

> well, there is the feature request which needs to be done. So there is
> no way around it.
hehe I know about them .. sometimes I still tell them no :)

> What problems exactly, how can they be avoided?
Well here is a small list I have noticed personally:
- replying to mailing lists is a nono
- replying to spam is a nono
- spamming replies to senders more than once big nono
- lots more I can't even remember but are annoying

I would suggest you take a look at 
http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-ietf-sieve-vacation-07 it kinda 
explains what a vacation system should and should not do.

On a side note I personally feel that MD is not the right place for 
autoresponders.  MD talkes with the MTA and is not ultimately 
responsible for the mail delivery to your users, the MTA only routes our 
mail to from other MTAs or to MDAs.  The place you would want to place 
this auto repond code would be in the MDA ( the program that actually 
places the mail into some mail store ).  IMHO integrating an 
autoresponders in mimedefang would probably break more than you would think.

--
Michiel Brandenburg




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