[Mailman-Users] lists that are members of each other - bad idea?

[Brad Knowles]

At 12:06 AM -0700 2004/05/10, Barnaby Scott wrote:

>  Does anyone know the consequences of setting up two
>  lists which are members of each other?

	I believe that would be very bad news.

>  Presumably the X-BeenThere header should come into
>  play to avoid such an eventuality, but will it work in
>  these circs? Or even if it does work, should one not
>  do this sort of thing for other reasons?

	The risk is that you will have set up a potentially serious loop, 
for which there is only one way to detect and stop it before there is 
a melt down.  All it would take is a misconfigured client or MTA to 
remove certain headers before sending the message on, and you and 
everyone else would be toast.

	Before you take a shotgun with a hair trigger and load it with 
thermonuclear shells, you might want to give some consideration to 
what it might do when you go away and leave it pointed in your 
direction -- especially when there are children and pets around, any 
one of which might accidentally set it off.

-- 
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.