[Mailman-Users] Understanding Bounces

[Jim Tittsler]

On Tue, Oct 05, 2004 at 07:34:40AM -0700, Bill Moseley wrote:
> I just created a list with three emails.  Sent a few messages it all
> worked fine.  Then I removed one of the addresses from my aliases file
> and the MTA logs show that when mailmain attempts to deliver the
> message I see:  "Unrouteable address" for that address.

Did you update to Mailman 2.1.5?  (As I mentioned in an earlier
note, the bounce processing is quite different.)

I just added a bogus address to a test mailing list, set "The
maximum member bounce score before the member's subscription is
disabled" to 0.9... and after the first message sent to the
list I did get the "Bounce action notification" that I expected.

> I assume mailmain is tracking that reject some place.  But where?

In 2.0.x  would expect it to be logged in the bounce log and tracked
in the bounce_info dictionary in the list object.  (Use
bin/withlist and print m.bounce_info for your list.)

As I mentioned in 2.0.x there was an interaction with
minimum_removal_date.  I think if you send at least
minimum_post_count_before_bounce_action messages over at least
minimum_removal_date days (but less than 5 times that number of
days, when the bounces were considered stale by Mailman 2.0.x),
you should get the notification.

> Oh, and now I just set "Try to figure out error messages
> automatically?" to "no" and sent another message, saw the reject in
> the MTA logs but didn't receive any notification from Mailmain.

I don't have an old 2.0.x installation I can play with, but the
code claims that if:
        # Either bounce processing isn't turned on or the bounce detector
        # found no recognized bounce format in the message.  In either case,
        # forward the dang thing off to the list owners.  Be sure to munge the

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