stefano@ecf.toronto.edu (Bruno Di Stefano) (02/15/91)
Many students in my UNIX class have asked me if there is any feature that allows the sender of an email message to receive an automatic acknowledgement of the receipt of the message at the receiver site. I would be interested in knowing of solutions to this problem in different flavours of UNIX and different mailing programs. -- Bruno Di Stefano stefano@ecf.toronto.edu
jerry@ora.com (Jerry Peek) (02/16/91)
In article <1991Feb14.183738.19966@ecf.utoronto.ca> stefano@ecf.toronto.edu (Bruno Di Stefano) writes: > Many students in my UNIX class have asked me if there is any > feature that allows the sender of an email message to receive an > automatic acknowledgement of the receipt of the message at > the receiver site. I would be interested in knowing of > solutions to this problem in different flavours of UNIX > and different mailing programs. I would, too. (Sorry if this is an FAQ on the list; I've just started reading comp.mail.misc.) To start things rolling, here's one way. You can put a line in the message header like this: Return-receipt-to: stefano@ecf.toronto.edu The message you get back means the message arrived at the remote site, *not* that the addressee read the message. When I've done that, I think the sites that answered all ran sendmail. Not all sites do, of course... --Jerry Peek, jerry@ora.com or uunet!ora!jerry
gary@apexepa.UUCP (Gary Wisniewski) (02/25/91)
>In article <1991Feb14.183738.19966@ecf.utoronto.ca> stefano@ecf.toronto.edu (Bruno Di Stefano) writes: > Many students in my UNIX class have asked me if there is any > feature that allows the sender of an email message to receive an > automatic acknowledgement of the receipt of the message at > the receiver site. I would be interested in knowing of > solutions to this problem in different flavours of UNIX > and different mailing programs. I use a rather odious hack when I need to do this. If I send mail to stefano@ecf.toronto.edu, I include a "Bcc: bogus_receipt@ecf.toronto.edu" so that the mailer daemon on ecf sends me notification of arrival in the form of a unknown user message. Since this is sometimes annoying to sysops, I refrain from doing this except when I must be certain there was no failure in transport. I deal with lots of people who claim that their mail was "lost" somewhere (a popular excuse when folks don't want to admit they received some important mail). It's nice to know that the mail arrived at the site. -- Gary Wisniewski uunet!apexepa!gary Apex Software Corporation gary@apexepa.uucp Phone: (412) 681-4343
rickert@mp.cs.niu.edu (Neil Rickert) (02/25/91)
In article <106@apexepa.UUCP> gary@apexepa.UUCP (Gary Wisniewski) writes: > >I use a rather odious hack when I need to do this. If I send mail to >stefano@ecf.toronto.edu, I include a "Bcc: bogus_receipt@ecf.toronto.edu" >so that the mailer daemon on ecf sends me notification of arrival in >the form of a unknown user message. This may not work the way you intend. If the final leg of transmission is with an SMTP connection, the error message is likely to be generated at the penultimate site before the message has reached the destination site. Basically, the mailbox is usually verified in the RCPT exchange before the message is transmitted. If there is an error reported, the sending mailer will report the 'unknown user'. For all you know, the unknown user message might have tripped a bug which prevented the mail from going thru. Better to use Return-Receipt-To: Best is to ask the real recipient to produce an acknowledgement manually. -- =*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*= Neil W. Rickert, Computer Science <rickert@cs.niu.edu> Northern Illinois Univ. DeKalb, IL 60115 +1-815-753-6940