Uncaught bounce notifications
![](https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/f643d4a092d7b79238b449a7d75a31aa.jpg?s=120&d=mm&r=g)
Hello,
I have seen on this mailing list a few posts on the thread of
"Uncaught bounce notifications" but have not found the answer I need. One of our user's received one of these notifications and the list owner wants to know why the user received it. She believed that if "Should Mailman send you, the list owner, any bounce messages that failed to be detected by the bounce processor?" is set to Yes in the Bounce Processing Section, the list owner should only get the bounces and not the sender. If my understanding is correct, and please tell me if I am wrong, sendmail (our MTA) will send a bounce notification to the sender regardless of this mailman setting?
Also, is there a way to avoid user's replying to
listname-bounce@list.odu.edu? We would, of course, prefer that subscribers to reply to listname@list.odu.edu but the bounce address is the one that mailman uses when sending the mail out.
Darren Old Dominion University
![](https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/e6ea3e5ffc3558c74e9f8cbf3f38357a.jpg?s=120&d=mm&r=g)
At 9:34 AM -0500 2005-11-30, Darren G Pifer wrote:
The user can do whatever they want, or whatever their software
allows them to do. It sounds like some misconfigured software is setting them up to reply to listname-bounce instead of listname, but short of setting a reply-to header (see <http://www.python.org/cgi-bin/faqw-mm.py?req=show&file=faq03.048.htp> for why this is strongly discouraged), I don't think you're going to be able to "fix" a user problem by making changes on the server.
In short, if a patient goes to the doctor and complains that it
hurts when they do a certain thing in a certain way, it is not at all unusual for the doctor to inform them to stop doing that thing in that way.
-- Brad Knowles, <brad@stop.mail-abuse.org>
"Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety."
-- Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790), reply of the Pennsylvania
Assembly to the Governor, November 11, 1755
SAGE member since 1995. See <http://www.sage.org/> for more info.
![](https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/746f7519ba02fb0d815e59f305c53fa2.jpg?s=120&d=mm&r=g)
Brad Knowles wrote:
Also see <http://www.python.org/cgi-bin/faqw-mm.py?req=show&file=faq02.003.htp>.
-- Mark Sapiro <msapiro@value.net> The highway is for gamblers, San Francisco Bay Area, California better use your sense - B. Dylan
![](https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/746f7519ba02fb0d815e59f305c53fa2.jpg?s=120&d=mm&r=g)
Darren G Pifer wrote:
This is correct.
What is the sender (original poster) receiving, and why do you think it is coming from your sendmail and not, for example, the bouncing recipient's MTA?
When Mailman receives a bounce at listname-bounces@... and the bounce is 'unrecognized' and listname's bounce_unrecognized_goes_to_list_owner attribute is set to Yes, Mailman will send an "Uncaught bounce notification" to the owner(s) (but not the moderator(s)) of the listname list. This is the only way Mailman sends an "Uncaught bounce notification", and the only addresses it is sent to.
This message has specific charastics as follows:
It is From: sitelist-bounces@grizz.org 'sitelist' is normally 'mailman'
It is To: listname-owner@...
It has Subject: Uncaught bounce notification
It is multipart/mixed with the text/plain body - The attached message was received as a bounce, but either the bounce format was not recognized, or no member addresses could be extracted from it. This mailing list has been configured to send all unrecognized bounce messages to the list administrator(s).
For more information see: http://www.example.com/mailman/admin/listname/bounce
It has a message/rfc822 attachment which contains the unrecognized bounce message as received by Mailman.
If a user other than an owner of the list received such a message, it was most likely relayed to that user outside of Mailman. You need to analyze the Received: headers and other information in the message received by the unintended recipient to see how it got there.
Note that is is not at all unusual for users to receive _other_ bounce messages. There are apparently many non-compliant MTAs in use that will return a bounced post to the poster rather than to the listname-bounces address, but these messages will not have the charastics of an "Uncaught bounce notification".
-- Mark Sapiro <msapiro@value.net> The highway is for gamblers, San Francisco Bay Area, California better use your sense - B. Dylan
![](https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/f643d4a092d7b79238b449a7d75a31aa.jpg?s=120&d=mm&r=g)
Hello,
On Thu, 2005-12-01 at 12:25, Mark Sapiro wrote:
Darren G Pifer wrote:
Here is the message, as forwarded to me by the list owner on behalf of the sender. I have changed the listname with LIST. This could be the case where the sender was using a MS Outlook client, as pointed out by the FAQ. If more information is needed, I will have to get the sender to provide the full headers of the message.
mailman-bounces@l
ist.odu.edu
To 11/27/2005 11:30 LIST-owner@list.odu.edu PM cc Subject Uncaught bounce notification
The attached message was received as a bounce, but either the bounce format was not recognized, or no member addresses could be extracted from it. This mailing list has been configured to send all unrecognized bounce messages to the list administrator(s).
For more information see: http://list.odu.edu/admin/LIST/bounce
----- Message from ... <user@odu.edu> on Sun, 27 Nov 2005 23:30:28 -0500 ----- To: LIST-bounces@list.odu.edu Subject: Re: [LIST] We need new officers for the spring semester! [BODY REMOVED]
Thanks,
![](https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/746f7519ba02fb0d815e59f305c53fa2.jpg?s=120&d=mm&r=g)
Darren G Pifer wrote:
Although some of the header info is garbled, possibly by a copy and paste operation, this is clearly a copy of an "Uncaught bounce notification". The original "bounce" appears to be a post erroneously sent to LIST-bounces@... instead of LIST@...
My question now, is are we sure there isn't some miscommunication between you, the list owner and the original user? Do we even really know that the original user (or anyone other than the list owner) actually received this specific message?
-- Mark Sapiro <msapiro@value.net> The highway is for gamblers, San Francisco Bay Area, California better use your sense - B. Dylan
![](https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/f643d4a092d7b79238b449a7d75a31aa.jpg?s=120&d=mm&r=g)
Hello,
This one is a little bit old but I thought I would add to
this thread anyhow. It appears that the problem with the "uncaught bounce notifications" was with the mail client the user had been using. The mail client that had this issue is named "Compoze" and is available through our Web portal. When the user hit the "reply" button in Compoze, the To: field was listname-bounces@list.odu.edu address.
As a test case, I sent some mail to a test list serve I created
"odutest@list.odu.edu" that had 2 email addresses (my own and a colleague) subscribed to it. I gathered results from 3 mailers: Lotus Notes (which is the school's supported mail client), Compoze and Evolution (my mail client) and what was returned when I clicked on the "Reply" button and on the "Reply to all" button for each mail clients after receiving mail. It is surprising how 3 mail clients came up with different results by clicking on these buttons.
Lotus Notes
=> Reply
To: dpifer@odu.edu
=> Reply to all
To: dpifer@odu.edu
Cc: odutest@list.odu.edu, odutest-bounces@list.odu.edu
Compoze
=> Reply
To: odutest-bounces@list.odu.edu
=> Reply to all
To: odutest-bounces@list.odu.edu, odutest@list.odu.edu
Evolution
=> Reply
To: dpifer@odu.edu
=> Reply to all
To: odutest@list.odu.edu
I am going to work with our Web portal people to see why compoze is working the way it is and see if this is resolvable.
-Darren
Old Dominion University Norfolk, VA
On Thu, 2005-12-01 at 13:53, Mark Sapiro wrote:
![](https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/746f7519ba02fb0d815e59f305c53fa2.jpg?s=120&d=mm&r=g)
Darren G Pifer wrote:
Because Compoze is replying to the envelope sender or possibly the Sender: address instead of the address(es) in Reply-To: or From:. Compoze is not doing the right thing.
I don't think the Reply to all should include odutest-bounces@list.odu.edu. This is unusual, but not strictly WRONG because it is not covered by the standard.
Compoze
This is clearly wrong. Compoze is completely overriding the From: in favor of Sender: or envelope sender.
Evolution
I suspect the only reason that dpifer@odu.edu is not included in the Reply to all is that it is you <dpifer@odu.edu> doing the replying and Evolution knows it. I suspect if your colleague posted and you did a Reply to all, it would go to odutest@list.odu.edu and the colleague, or better, To: the colleague with Cc: to the list. Assuming this is correct, I would say that Evolution is the only user agent that is doing the right thing.
I am going to work with our Web portal people to see why compoze is working the way it is and see if this is resolvable.
And from RFC 2822 sec 3.6.3 When a message is a reply to another message, the mailboxes of the authors of the original message (the mailboxes in the "From:" field) or mailboxes specified in the "Reply-To:" field (if it exists) MAY appear in the "To:" field of the reply since these would normally be the primary recipients of the reply. If a reply is sent to a message that has destination fields, it is often desirable to send a copy of the reply to all of the recipients of the message, in addition to the author. When such a reply is formed, addresses in the "To:" and "Cc:" fields of the original message MAY appear in the "Cc:" field of the reply, since these are normally secondary recipients of the reply. If a "Bcc:" field is present in the original message, addresses in that field MAY appear in the "Bcc:" field of the reply, but SHOULD NOT appear in the "To:" or "Cc:" fields.
Note: Some mail applications have automatic reply commands that include the destination addresses of the original message in the destination addresses of the reply. How those reply commands behave is implementation dependent and is beyond the scope of this document. In particular, whether or not to include the original destination addresses when the original message had a "Reply-To:" field is not addressed here.
Two other notes from me: Bcc fields will normally not appear in a message being replied to if the message was received from someone else, as the Bcc will normally have been removed.
Although the RFC declines to address the operation of automatic reply commands, I note that this is in the area of which destination addresses might be included in the reply. I don't thing it contemplates substituting Sender: or envelope sender for From: or Reply-To: addresses.
-- Mark Sapiro <msapiro@value.net> The highway is for gamblers, San Francisco Bay Area, California better use your sense - B. Dylan
![](https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/e6ea3e5ffc3558c74e9f8cbf3f38357a.jpg?s=120&d=mm&r=g)
At 9:34 AM -0500 2005-11-30, Darren G Pifer wrote:
The user can do whatever they want, or whatever their software
allows them to do. It sounds like some misconfigured software is setting them up to reply to listname-bounce instead of listname, but short of setting a reply-to header (see <http://www.python.org/cgi-bin/faqw-mm.py?req=show&file=faq03.048.htp> for why this is strongly discouraged), I don't think you're going to be able to "fix" a user problem by making changes on the server.
In short, if a patient goes to the doctor and complains that it
hurts when they do a certain thing in a certain way, it is not at all unusual for the doctor to inform them to stop doing that thing in that way.
-- Brad Knowles, <brad@stop.mail-abuse.org>
"Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety."
-- Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790), reply of the Pennsylvania
Assembly to the Governor, November 11, 1755
SAGE member since 1995. See <http://www.sage.org/> for more info.
![](https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/746f7519ba02fb0d815e59f305c53fa2.jpg?s=120&d=mm&r=g)
Brad Knowles wrote:
Also see <http://www.python.org/cgi-bin/faqw-mm.py?req=show&file=faq02.003.htp>.
-- Mark Sapiro <msapiro@value.net> The highway is for gamblers, San Francisco Bay Area, California better use your sense - B. Dylan
![](https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/746f7519ba02fb0d815e59f305c53fa2.jpg?s=120&d=mm&r=g)
Darren G Pifer wrote:
This is correct.
What is the sender (original poster) receiving, and why do you think it is coming from your sendmail and not, for example, the bouncing recipient's MTA?
When Mailman receives a bounce at listname-bounces@... and the bounce is 'unrecognized' and listname's bounce_unrecognized_goes_to_list_owner attribute is set to Yes, Mailman will send an "Uncaught bounce notification" to the owner(s) (but not the moderator(s)) of the listname list. This is the only way Mailman sends an "Uncaught bounce notification", and the only addresses it is sent to.
This message has specific charastics as follows:
It is From: sitelist-bounces@grizz.org 'sitelist' is normally 'mailman'
It is To: listname-owner@...
It has Subject: Uncaught bounce notification
It is multipart/mixed with the text/plain body - The attached message was received as a bounce, but either the bounce format was not recognized, or no member addresses could be extracted from it. This mailing list has been configured to send all unrecognized bounce messages to the list administrator(s).
For more information see: http://www.example.com/mailman/admin/listname/bounce
It has a message/rfc822 attachment which contains the unrecognized bounce message as received by Mailman.
If a user other than an owner of the list received such a message, it was most likely relayed to that user outside of Mailman. You need to analyze the Received: headers and other information in the message received by the unintended recipient to see how it got there.
Note that is is not at all unusual for users to receive _other_ bounce messages. There are apparently many non-compliant MTAs in use that will return a bounced post to the poster rather than to the listname-bounces address, but these messages will not have the charastics of an "Uncaught bounce notification".
-- Mark Sapiro <msapiro@value.net> The highway is for gamblers, San Francisco Bay Area, California better use your sense - B. Dylan
![](https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/f643d4a092d7b79238b449a7d75a31aa.jpg?s=120&d=mm&r=g)
Hello,
On Thu, 2005-12-01 at 12:25, Mark Sapiro wrote:
Darren G Pifer wrote:
Here is the message, as forwarded to me by the list owner on behalf of the sender. I have changed the listname with LIST. This could be the case where the sender was using a MS Outlook client, as pointed out by the FAQ. If more information is needed, I will have to get the sender to provide the full headers of the message.
mailman-bounces@l
ist.odu.edu
To 11/27/2005 11:30 LIST-owner@list.odu.edu PM cc Subject Uncaught bounce notification
The attached message was received as a bounce, but either the bounce format was not recognized, or no member addresses could be extracted from it. This mailing list has been configured to send all unrecognized bounce messages to the list administrator(s).
For more information see: http://list.odu.edu/admin/LIST/bounce
----- Message from ... <user@odu.edu> on Sun, 27 Nov 2005 23:30:28 -0500 ----- To: LIST-bounces@list.odu.edu Subject: Re: [LIST] We need new officers for the spring semester! [BODY REMOVED]
Thanks,
![](https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/746f7519ba02fb0d815e59f305c53fa2.jpg?s=120&d=mm&r=g)
Darren G Pifer wrote:
Although some of the header info is garbled, possibly by a copy and paste operation, this is clearly a copy of an "Uncaught bounce notification". The original "bounce" appears to be a post erroneously sent to LIST-bounces@... instead of LIST@...
My question now, is are we sure there isn't some miscommunication between you, the list owner and the original user? Do we even really know that the original user (or anyone other than the list owner) actually received this specific message?
-- Mark Sapiro <msapiro@value.net> The highway is for gamblers, San Francisco Bay Area, California better use your sense - B. Dylan
![](https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/f643d4a092d7b79238b449a7d75a31aa.jpg?s=120&d=mm&r=g)
Hello,
This one is a little bit old but I thought I would add to
this thread anyhow. It appears that the problem with the "uncaught bounce notifications" was with the mail client the user had been using. The mail client that had this issue is named "Compoze" and is available through our Web portal. When the user hit the "reply" button in Compoze, the To: field was listname-bounces@list.odu.edu address.
As a test case, I sent some mail to a test list serve I created
"odutest@list.odu.edu" that had 2 email addresses (my own and a colleague) subscribed to it. I gathered results from 3 mailers: Lotus Notes (which is the school's supported mail client), Compoze and Evolution (my mail client) and what was returned when I clicked on the "Reply" button and on the "Reply to all" button for each mail clients after receiving mail. It is surprising how 3 mail clients came up with different results by clicking on these buttons.
Lotus Notes
=> Reply
To: dpifer@odu.edu
=> Reply to all
To: dpifer@odu.edu
Cc: odutest@list.odu.edu, odutest-bounces@list.odu.edu
Compoze
=> Reply
To: odutest-bounces@list.odu.edu
=> Reply to all
To: odutest-bounces@list.odu.edu, odutest@list.odu.edu
Evolution
=> Reply
To: dpifer@odu.edu
=> Reply to all
To: odutest@list.odu.edu
I am going to work with our Web portal people to see why compoze is working the way it is and see if this is resolvable.
-Darren
Old Dominion University Norfolk, VA
On Thu, 2005-12-01 at 13:53, Mark Sapiro wrote:
![](https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/746f7519ba02fb0d815e59f305c53fa2.jpg?s=120&d=mm&r=g)
Darren G Pifer wrote:
Because Compoze is replying to the envelope sender or possibly the Sender: address instead of the address(es) in Reply-To: or From:. Compoze is not doing the right thing.
I don't think the Reply to all should include odutest-bounces@list.odu.edu. This is unusual, but not strictly WRONG because it is not covered by the standard.
Compoze
This is clearly wrong. Compoze is completely overriding the From: in favor of Sender: or envelope sender.
Evolution
I suspect the only reason that dpifer@odu.edu is not included in the Reply to all is that it is you <dpifer@odu.edu> doing the replying and Evolution knows it. I suspect if your colleague posted and you did a Reply to all, it would go to odutest@list.odu.edu and the colleague, or better, To: the colleague with Cc: to the list. Assuming this is correct, I would say that Evolution is the only user agent that is doing the right thing.
I am going to work with our Web portal people to see why compoze is working the way it is and see if this is resolvable.
And from RFC 2822 sec 3.6.3 When a message is a reply to another message, the mailboxes of the authors of the original message (the mailboxes in the "From:" field) or mailboxes specified in the "Reply-To:" field (if it exists) MAY appear in the "To:" field of the reply since these would normally be the primary recipients of the reply. If a reply is sent to a message that has destination fields, it is often desirable to send a copy of the reply to all of the recipients of the message, in addition to the author. When such a reply is formed, addresses in the "To:" and "Cc:" fields of the original message MAY appear in the "Cc:" field of the reply, since these are normally secondary recipients of the reply. If a "Bcc:" field is present in the original message, addresses in that field MAY appear in the "Bcc:" field of the reply, but SHOULD NOT appear in the "To:" or "Cc:" fields.
Note: Some mail applications have automatic reply commands that include the destination addresses of the original message in the destination addresses of the reply. How those reply commands behave is implementation dependent and is beyond the scope of this document. In particular, whether or not to include the original destination addresses when the original message had a "Reply-To:" field is not addressed here.
Two other notes from me: Bcc fields will normally not appear in a message being replied to if the message was received from someone else, as the Bcc will normally have been removed.
Although the RFC declines to address the operation of automatic reply commands, I note that this is in the area of which destination addresses might be included in the reply. I don't thing it contemplates substituting Sender: or envelope sender for From: or Reply-To: addresses.
-- Mark Sapiro <msapiro@value.net> The highway is for gamblers, San Francisco Bay Area, California better use your sense - B. Dylan
participants (3)
-
Brad Knowles
-
Darren G Pifer
-
Mark Sapiro