[Mailman-Users] Emails coming through as "maillist-bounces" - is this normal?

Stephen J. Turnbull stephen at xemacs.org
Thu Sep 1 03:52:07 CEST 2005


>>>>> "memmott" == memmott  <@ HitCatcher.com" <memmott at hitcatcher.com>> writes:

    memmott> A client of ours has a mailman list set up called
    memmott> awake at domain.org. For some reason, when anybody posts to
    memmott> this list, the return address of the list comes across as
    memmott> "awake-bounces at domain.org
    memmott> [mailto:awake-bounces at domain.org] On Behalf Of firstname
    memmott> lastname"

AFAIK this is an Outlook-specific bug, and not a Mailman issue.  What
is happening is that Outlook is ignoring the "From" header and using
either the "Sender" header or the envelope sender as the return
address.  This is in violation of the Internet standards for mail
clients.

I realize that it's hard to get users to change their mail clients,
but that is the right solution to this problem.

    memmott> Anyways, is this the default behavior/ Is there any way
    memmott> to force it to send out emails as awake at domain.org and
    memmott> not awake-bounces?

Mailman does not "send out mail as itself" in the default
configuration; it simply forwards the mail and leaves the author's
address in place.  However, because it is sending mail to many
addresses which may or may not be valid, it lists itself as the
"Sender" so that delivery problems will be referred to Mailman, and
not to the author.

It is not possible to configure Mailman to use a different Sender.
This is to protect your list from being spammed by returns of
undeliverable mail.

-- 
School of Systems and Information Engineering http://turnbull.sk.tsukuba.ac.jp
University of Tsukuba                    Tennodai 1-1-1 Tsukuba 305-8573 JAPAN
               Ask not how you can "do" free software business;
              ask what your business can "do for" free software.



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