[Mailman-Developers] VERP code

[Edmund Lau]

On Thu, 17 Oct 2002, Stonewall Ballard wrote:

> I'm having the same problem. All of the bounces are "unrecognized". After
> staring at this code for a while, I don't think that we have the same
> problem, just the same symptoms.

We might actually be having the same problem.  I get the "unrecognized"
errors in my bounce logs too.  For instance:

Oct 16 21:57:27 2002 (32490) forwarding unrecognized, message-id:
<DNffhMoQ10000 984b@mc5-s4.law1.hotmail.com>

The only saving grace on why some addresses get recognized is because
addresses get checked after the initial verp_bounce call, if there aren't
any returned addrs on line 71.  The unrecognized ones come when some users
subscribe from accounts which forward messages.

>
> Are you saying that your VERP_FORMAT is '%(bounces)s-%(mailbox)s=%(host)s' ?
>
> If so, I don't think that would work very well since the mailbox name could
> have a '-' in it, making part matching ambiguous.
>
> If I misunderstood, can you clarify? What are your VERP_FORMAT and your
> VERP_REGEXP?
>

Yes, my VERP_FORMAT is '%(bounces)s-%(mailbox)s=%(host)s'.  However, my
understanding is that mailman only uses this variable to generate the
appropriate VERP string.  It's actually the VERP_REGEXP which matches when
a bounce is received.  Mine is:
r'^(?P<bounces>[^-]+?)-(?P<mailbox>[^=]+)=(?P<host>[^@]+)@.*$'

But like I said earlier, the REGEXP seems fine since my error is line 155
and the VERP_REGEXP has already been successfully matched on 151.  (If it
had failed, it would have hit 152-153 and never get around to 155.)  To be
sure, I made a quick driver and ran it against some known good and known
bad VERP strings.

So while it's true that extra hyphens may mess the matching up (which I do
have lists containing it), it's rather unlikely that's the problem, esp
since I have a list named 'test' and even that failed.

Any other ideas?
-Ed