fair@ucbarpa.BERKELEY.EDU (Erik E. &) (10/25/85)
In article <2323@ukma.UUCP> sean@ukma.UUCP (Sean Casey) writes: >>Various complaints about arpanet messages sent to usenet people because >>some arpanet machine couldn't contact another to forward a mailing list. > >I am quite seriously thinking of writing a program to pull such messages out >of my mailbox and mail them back to the offending machine. I think maybe if >something like that got posted and people started using it then the people >responsible would take action to correct it. Consider yourself lucky. Every message that leaves the USENET from ucbvax bound for an ARPANET mailing list has two headers added to it: Sender: usenet@ucbvax.berkeley.edu Errors-To: usenet@ucbvax.berkeley.edu I'm usenet@ucbvax.berkeley.edu. Imagine my mailbox. If a mailer is implemented properly, it should send error messages back to the `Sender:'. `Errors-To:' is something that sendmail knows about, which I insert as insurance. The offending systems that have been incorrectly routing error messages back to the USENET poster are all TENEX/TWENEX systems. I encourage you to bombard the mailbox postmaster@offending.arpa.host for each error message you receive. If you (and others) lambast the individual postmasters sufficiently, perhaps they will in turn poke the mailer implementer(s) to FIX the damned things. Among other odious behaviour exhibited by these mailers is that they will try an address for three days, and EACH DAY they will send an update if the message has not gotten through. Personally, I only want to know when my message finally fails. Before that, I don't want to hear it! keeper of the network news for ucbvax, and guardian of the gateway, Erik E. Fair ucbvax!fair fair@ucbarpa.BERKELEY.EDU