Bounce messages create tickets

Hi all,

Just encountered a bit of an annoying behaviour:

  1. A user sends a new request
  2. RT sends an auto-responder
  3. Autoresponder bounces (mailbox full for ex.)
  4. Autoresponder is seen as a new request
  5. Postmaster of some remote gateway gets autoresponder on ticket creation

Has anybody had that problem before? If yes, is there a known fix?

Really what would be best to do, would be to identify “bounce” messages (the MAIL FROM in
the eveloppe is blank in those), and treat them appropriately.

Any other bright ideas on this one?

Thanks
Yan
Yan Fitterer
IT Manager, Royal Academy of Music
E-mail : y.fitterer@ram.ac.uk
Marylebone Rd, London, NW1 5HT
Phone (+44) 20 7873 7365 Fax (+44) 20 7873 7364

I had this happen to me and within minutes had 50 new tickets. My only fix
was change the rt incoming mail alias to myself for a bit.

Perhaps a throttle feature is needed? More than x tickets in y seconds,
stop processing and email administrator ?From: “Yan Fitterer” y.fitterer@ram.ac.uk
To: rt-users@lists.fsck.com
Sent: Tuesday, January 29, 2002 1:44 AM
Subject: [rt-users] Bounce messages create tickets

Hi all,

Just encountered a bit of an annoying behaviour:

  1. A user sends a new request
  2. RT sends an auto-responder
  3. Autoresponder bounces (mailbox full for ex.)
  4. Autoresponder is seen as a new request
  5. Postmaster of some remote gateway gets autoresponder on ticket creation

Has anybody had that problem before? If yes, is there a known fix?

Really what would be best to do, would be to identify “bounce” messages
(the MAIL FROM in
the eveloppe is blank in those), and treat them appropriately.

Any other bright ideas on this one?

Thanks
Yan

Yan Fitterer
IT Manager, Royal Academy of Music
E-mail : y.fitterer@ram.ac.uk
Marylebone Rd, London, NW1 5HT
Phone (+44) 20 7873 7365 Fax (+44) 20 7873 7364


rt-users mailing list
rt-users@lists.fsck.com
http://lists.fsck.com/mailman/listinfo/rt-users

I didn’t have a mail storm (this time - but had a rather nasty one a few months ago where
the filesystem ran out of space…), merely a bewildered postmaster that found himself in
a ticket he didn’t really want!

The problem could potentially be painfull if we had loads of requests coming from outside
addresses, which we don’t. But I would still like to be able to set RT to recognise
bounce messages, and treat them accordingly.

Yan---- On 29 Jan 2002, at 7:46, matthew zeier wrote: ----

I had this happen to me and within minutes had 50 new tickets. My only fix
was change the rt incoming mail alias to myself for a bit.

Perhaps a throttle feature is needed? More than x tickets in y seconds,
stop processing and email administrator ?

----- Original Message -----
From: “Yan Fitterer” y.fitterer@ram.ac.uk
To: rt-users@lists.fsck.com
Sent: Tuesday, January 29, 2002 1:44 AM
Subject: [rt-users] Bounce messages create tickets

Hi all,

Just encountered a bit of an annoying behaviour:

  1. A user sends a new request
  2. RT sends an auto-responder
  3. Autoresponder bounces (mailbox full for ex.)
  4. Autoresponder is seen as a new request
  5. Postmaster of some remote gateway gets autoresponder on ticket creation

Has anybody had that problem before? If yes, is there a known fix?

Really what would be best to do, would be to identify “bounce” messages
(the MAIL FROM in
the eveloppe is blank in those), and treat them appropriately.

Any other bright ideas on this one?

Thanks
Yan

Yan Fitterer
IT Manager, Royal Academy of Music
E-mail : y.fitterer@ram.ac.uk
Marylebone Rd, London, NW1 5HT
Phone (+44) 20 7873 7365 Fax (+44) 20 7873 7364


rt-users mailing list
rt-users@lists.fsck.com
http://lists.fsck.com/mailman/listinfo/rt-users

Yan Fitterer
IT Manager, Royal Academy of Music
E-mail : y.fitterer@ram.ac.uk
Marylebone Rd, London, NW1 5HT
Phone (+44) 20 7873 7365 Fax (+44) 20 7873 7364

One thing you could do is to put a nice procmail rule in between your
MTA and the rt-mailgate. I appreciate and understand the challenge of
RT handling bounces, but my philosophy on issues like this is to let
the software that has been written to address this problem… address
this problem. That’s opposed to RT being extended to handle it.

Also, having RT requests pass through a procmail rule isn’t too
complicated a solution, either. You just have to make sure your rule is
good. :slight_smile:

Matt

“Yan Fitterer” writes:

“YF” == Yan Fitterer y.fitterer@ram.ac.uk writes:

YF> 1) A user sends a new request
YF> 2) RT sends an auto-responder
YF> 3) Autoresponder bounces (mailbox full for ex.)
YF> 4) Autoresponder is seen as a new request
YF> 5) Postmaster of some remote gateway gets autoresponder on ticket creation

YF> Has anybody had that problem before? If yes, is there a known fix?

The envelope FROM address should be “nobody@your.domain” which
should go to /dev/null. If it is that way, then the remote side is
*ucked up and sending bounces to the message header “From” address
rather than the SMTP envelope address, and is not properly
implementing SMTP. There is no way you can work around all such
broken software out there.

Vivek Khera wrote:

The envelope FROM address should be “nobody@your.domain”

It should?

The envelope will be whatever user your MTA runs as (for an
email-generated reply) – on some systems this is daemon, or
mail, or pretty much anything. It probably should NOT be nobody.

which
should go to /dev/null.

Why? I’ve never seen a requirement for a /dev/null address.

If it is that way, then the remote side is
*ucked up and sending bounces to the message header “From” address
rather than the SMTP envelope address, and is not properly
implementing SMTP. There is no way you can work around all such
broken software out there.

This much is true. Unless you have a config I’ve never seen before,
bounce replies to RT-generated correspondence shouldn’t appear at
an RT address. However, there’s a lot of dain-bramaged software out
there that wouldn’t know an envelope if it cut itself opening one.

“PH” == Phil Homewood pdh@snapgear.com writes:

PH> Vivek Khera wrote:

The envelope FROM address should be “nobody@your.domain”

PH> It should?

Under postfix, at least.

PH> The envelope will be whatever user your MTA runs as (for an
PH> email-generated reply) – on some systems this is daemon, or
PH> mail, or pretty much anything. It probably should NOT be nobody.

which
should go to /dev/null.

PH> Why? I’ve never seen a requirement for a /dev/null address.

Ok, it can go anywhere, but usually goes to /dev/null in systems I’ve
ever worked on (not amateur systems…)

One thing you could do is to put a nice procmail rule in between your
MTA and the rt-mailgate. I appreciate and understand the challenge of
RT handling bounces, but my philosophy on issues like this is to let
the software that has been written to address this problem… address
this problem. That’s opposed to RT being extended to handle it.

I’ll second that – I’ve been using procmail for preventing spam/mail
loops for years. My organization has been using RT since about
1997-1998 and we’ve been using procmail with it ever since.

procmail also gives you a lot more flexibility to deny spam/mail loops
based on things other than the From address, of course…

-Chris Tracy
(Telerama Internet -/- System & Network Administrator -/- www.telerama.com)On Tue, 29 Jan 2002, Matt Disney wrote:

Also, having RT requests pass through a procmail rule isn’t too
complicated a solution, either. You just have to make sure your rule is
good. :slight_smile:

Matt

“Yan Fitterer” writes:

I didn’t have a mail storm (this time - but had a rather nasty one a few month
s ago where
the filesystem ran out of space…), merely a bewildered postmaster that found
himself in
a ticket he didn’t really want!

The problem could potentially be painfull if we had loads of requests coming f
rom outside
addresses, which we don’t. But I would still like to be able to set RT to reco
gnise
bounce messages, and treat them accordingly.

Yan

---- On 29 Jan 2002, at 7:46, matthew zeier wrote: ----

I had this happen to me and within minutes had 50 new tickets. My only fix
was change the rt incoming mail alias to myself for a bit.

Perhaps a throttle feature is needed? More than x tickets in y seconds,
stop processing and email administrator ?

----- Original Message -----
From: “Yan Fitterer” y.fitterer@ram.ac.uk
To: rt-users@lists.fsck.com
Sent: Tuesday, January 29, 2002 1:44 AM
Subject: [rt-users] Bounce messages create tickets

Hi all,

Just encountered a bit of an annoying behaviour:

  1. A user sends a new request
  2. RT sends an auto-responder
  3. Autoresponder bounces (mailbox full for ex.)
  4. Autoresponder is seen as a new request
  5. Postmaster of some remote gateway gets autoresponder on ticket creation

Has anybody had that problem before? If yes, is there a known fix?

Really what would be best to do, would be to identify “bounce” messages
(the MAIL FROM in
the eveloppe is blank in those), and treat them appropriately.

Any other bright ideas on this one?

Thanks
Yan

Yan Fitterer
IT Manager, Royal Academy of Music
E-mail : y.fitterer@ram.ac.uk
Marylebone Rd, London, NW1 5HT
Phone (+44) 20 7873 7365 Fax (+44) 20 7873 7364


rt-users mailing list
rt-users@lists.fsck.com
http://lists.fsck.com/mailman/listinfo/rt-users


Yan Fitterer
IT Manager, Royal Academy of Music
E-mail : y.fitterer@ram.ac.uk
Marylebone Rd, London, NW1 5HT
Phone (+44) 20 7873 7365 Fax (+44) 20 7873 7364


rt-users mailing list
rt-users@lists.fsck.com
http://lists.fsck.com/mailman/listinfo/rt-users


rt-users mailing list
rt-users@lists.fsck.com
http://lists.fsck.com/mailman/listinfo/rt-users

“r” == rt-for-chris rt-for-chris@db.lm.com writes:

One thing you could do is to put a nice procmail rule in between your
MTA and the rt-mailgate. I appreciate and understand the challenge of

r> I’ll second that – I’ve been using procmail for preventing spam/mail
r> loops for years. My organization has been using RT since about
r> 1997-1998 and we’ve been using procmail with it ever since.

Personally, I think RT should catch those bounces and then flag the
ticket that the email address of the submitted is bogus. No point
wasting time replying to these people when your mail won’t get through
anyway, is there?