[Mailman-Developers] Handling Bouncebacks

[Norbert Bollow]

> I'm interested in understanding how Mailman handles
> bounces

It essentially tries to parse them, in order to determine which
address is creating the problems.  This is not ideal.

This behavior is what I would like to have:

If the MTA is Qmail, which supports VERP without any loss of
performance, VERPs should be used always.

On other MTAs (where VERPing is expensive) you can use VERP on
say 5% of each batch of outgoing messages.  Every 20th message
to each address will have VERP.  Then you can use out-of-band
warnings and probes (like Ezmlm does) to see if the address
remains invalid for a long time.

> Basically, where is the entry point for disecting the
> message and determining whether is looks like a
> bounced email or the user's mailbox is just full.  

Please take into account that "mailbox full" errors are
sometimes permanent, and "user unknown" errors are sometimes
temporary.

Greetings, Norbert.

-- 
A member of FreeDevelopers and the DotGNU Steering Committee: dotgnu.org
Norbert Bollow, Weidlistr.18, CH-8624 Gruet   (near Zurich, Switzerland)
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