[Mailman-Users] Misdirected Monthly Notification Bounces

[Jon Carnes]

> >
> 
> One possible cause of receiving bounce notices for mail address that 
> are apparently not members is rewriting of mail aliases by some system 
> out there, where the rewritten email address is undeliverable.
> 
> Typical problem is person A leaves the business and their mail alias is 
> redirected to person B or Person A's mail is setup up so that their 
> secretary gets a copy of their mail as Person B. Person B subsequently 
> leaves the business and their mail alias is removed but redirection of 
> mail to person A's alias is continued. Result is mail sent to the alias 
> of person A is bounced because it is undeliverable to the alias of 
> person B, in respect of whose alias the bounce notice is raised.
> 
> These situations can be a real pain to track down but may not be the 
> cause of your grief. But, at least I know this problem occurs while the 
> hypothesized worm or virus causes I have not seen.
> 
> One approach I have used, with MM 2.1.2, to track down elusive bounces 
> is to temporarily enable personalization and VERP for a list with 
> bounce problems, set a maximum bounce score < 1.0, ensure list is set 
> to notify list owner when bounces cause unsubscribe, send a test 
> message to the list, and see what the VERP'ed return addresses are on 
> the bouce notifications of the users unsubscribed because of bounces.
> 
> I do not know of a simple answer to tracking this sort of problem down 
> with MM 2.0.7
> 

Richard, that sounds very much like it should be an FAQ for tracing down
bouncing messages (in version 2.1)...

Thanks - Jon Carnes