[Mailman-Users] Subscription mail-back failure

[Mark Sapiro]

Jan Steinman wrote:

>I have a hosting client who is seeing intermittent failures of the  
>subscription process. The user successfully fills in the subscription  
>information, gets the subscription confirmation notice with the link  
>and then tries to reply, and gets a bounce:
>
>> 	Permanent Failure:
>> 550_5.1.1_<ecovillagenewsletter- 
>> request at ecovillagenewsletter.org>:_Recipient
>> _address_rejected:_User_unknown_in_virtual_alias_table
>> 	Delivery last attempted at Sun, 27 Apr 2008 01:41:20 -0000
>> Reporting-MTA: dns; isp.att.net
>> Arrival-Date: 27 Apr 2008  1:41:04 +0000
>>
>> Final-Recipient: rfc822; <ecovillagenewsletter-request at EcovillageNewsletter.org 
>> >
>> Action: failed
>> Status: 5.0.0 550_5.1.1_<ecovillagenewsletter-request at ecovillagenewsletter.org 
>> >:_Recipient_address_rejected:_User_unknown_in_virtual_alias_table
>> Diagnostic-Code: smtp; Permanent Failure: Other undefined Status
>> Last-Attempt-Date: Sun, 27 Apr 2008 01:41:20 -0000
>
>Apparently, clicking the link is working, because hundreds of  
>subscriptions have succeeded. I can only assume the only ones failing  
>are ones that people mail back, rather than clicking the link.
>
>This is a fairly plain-jane installation. EcovillageNewsletter.org is  
>defined as a virtual domain. I don't see where I should have  
>configured anything special to enable this. Other mailing lists I host  
>(also on virtual domains) )aren't having this problem.
>
>Any clues where I should begin digging?


Apparently the MTA has whatever virtual maps/aliases are required to
deliver to <ecovillagenewsletter at ecovillagenewsletter.org> since I
assume the list works, but it is missing those for
<ecovillagenewsletter-request at ecovillagenewsletter.org> and how many
others of <ecovillagenewsletter-admin at ecovillagenewsletter.org>, 
<ecovillagenewsletter-bounces at ecovillagenewsletter.org>, 
<ecovillagenewsletter-confirm at ecovillagenewsletter.org>, 
<ecovillagenewsletter-join at ecovillagenewsletter.org>, 
<ecovillagenewsletter-leave at ecovillagenewsletter.org>, 
<ecovillagenewsletter-owner at ecovillagenewsletter.org>, 
<ecovillagenewsletter-subscribe at ecovillagenewsletter.org> and 
<ecovillagenewsletter-unsubscribe at ecovillagenewsletter.org>, all of
which should be deliverable in a "plain-jane installation".

This is in the MTA configuration and possibly involves Mailman since it
appears that mail.bytesmiths.com is running Postfix and you may be
using Mailman-Postfix integration for automatic alias generation. If
this latter is the case, you need to configure the things discussed in
both sections 6.1.1 and 6.1.2 at
<http://www.list.org/mailman-install/node12.html>

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