[Mailman-Users] envelpe sender

[Mark Sapiro]

Heather Madrone wrote:
>
>This morning, I discovered that mail to some of my list members is bouncing
>with the following error message:
>
>Nov  1 14:50:49 integrity postfix/smtp[1526]: 2CA3CAA2A5: to=<xxx at zzz.com>, relay=yyy.zzz.com[209.166.195.135], delay=34308, status=deferred (host yyy.zzz.com[209.166.195.135] said: 450 <mailman-bounces at Integrity.local>: Sender address rejected: Domain not found (in reply to RCPT TO command))


This message appears to be saying that postfix does not like the
envelope sender <mailman-bounces at Integrity.local>. I don't understand
why it comes in response to the RCPT TO command which specifies a
recipient instead of in response to the MAIL FROM command that
specified the envelope sender, but I guess that's because I don't know
postfix.

Anyway, when it comes isn't relevant to your questions.


>I immediately blamed postfix for using the machine's real hostname instead of
>the one I told it to.  After I'd straightened that out, I looked at the error again,
>and said, "Hmm, this looks like it could be coming from Mailman.  When I
>installed Mailman on this system, its hostname was Integrity.local, and I haven't
>run fix_url on the mailman list."
>
>So I ran fix_url on the mailman list.
>
>I don't at this point know whether that fixed the problem (these bounces
>are coming from messages that originated last night) or even whether it
>should have fixed the problem.  The headers of messages coming from
>my mailing lists have the hostname right, but I'm not sure where mailman-
>bounces comes into the picture.


Yes, running fix_url was the right thing to do. The messages are
probably monthly password notices which come from the mailman list.

List_name-bounces at host_name is always used as the envelope sender
because bounces are (supposed to be) returned the the envelope sender,
and list_name-bounces is the address for automated bounce processing.

When you ran fix_url on the mailman list, it fixed host_name for that
list so it is now what it should be instead of Integrity.local. Thus,
any new messages from the mailman list will be OK.


>Is there anything else I need to do to fix the hostname for the mailman
>list?  


No. It should be OK now for any new messages. The only problem is if
that error was reported to SMTPDirect, the password reminders (if
that's what they are) may be still in the retry queue and if so will
be retried and will fail again because the envelope sender for those
specific messages has already been determined.

Also, there is a tricky thing with password reminders only. In your
case, the From: header value may be mailman-owner at your.good.domain
even thouge the envelope is sent by mailman-bounces at Integrity.local.
This is just a consequence of the way password reminders are done "by
host". But in any case, running fix_url should solve the problem as
long as the mm_cfg.py stuff is right (and from previous posts, we
think it is).


-- 
Mark Sapiro <msapiro at value.net>       The highway is for gamblers,
San Francisco Bay Area, California    better use your sense - B. Dylan