[Mailman-Developers] [Greg Stark <gsstark@mit.edu>] Re: Bounce removal parameters default values

[Brad Knowles]

At 5:28 PM -0400 2004-06-17, Greg Stark wrote:

>  Well I said what I meant, "old version of sendmail". 50k was indeed the
>  standard maximum size for sendmail installs prior to MIME attachments and
>  html-mail and all these new-fangled gadgets.

	Just how old are we talking here?  Going back to the very early 
90's (before version 8), there was no default maximum message size. 
I'd have to check, but I'm not even sure that there was an option to 
set the maximum message size at that time -- I don't think there were 
enough single-letter options left.

>  I'm subscribed to plenty of mailing lists where attachments and html mail are
>  severely discouraged so even today it wouldn't be out of place to refuse mail
>  from these lists over 50k.

	Ahh, now that's a different matter.  That's the setting on the 
mailing list, and most likely not all mailing lists on that server 
have the same setting.  Most likely, the MTA is not set to the same 
value as the mailing list, and if it was then you'd be able to get in 
and back out cleanly.  Once out, you'd only have problems if your 
message size was below the maximum set by the list but above the 
maximum allowed by most recipients, which is highly unlikely.

>  Now I just have to figure out why I'm still being dropped.
>  I guess some of these mailing lists are old versions of mailman.

	Could be.  What's in the logs?

>  This is version skew issue is going to be a big issue going forward. Users of
>  mailing lists and ultimately any network service are at the mercy of the
>  admins of every list they're on to upgrade.

	Yup.  Not much we can do about that.

-- 
Brad Knowles, <brad.knowles at skynet.be>

"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary
safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."
     -Benjamin Franklin, Historical Review of Pennsylvania.

   SAGE member since 1995.  See <http://www.sage.org/> for more info.