[Mailman-Users] Strange? Bounce Processing

[Mark Sapiro]

Barry Finkel wrote:

>I am trying to understand Mailman 2.1.9 bounce processing.  I run a
>cron job each morning to capture all of the e-mail addresses for all
>of my Mailman lists where the bounce score is greater than 0.
>
>I have one list were there were bounces recorded for one e-mail address
>
>     Jul 17  ==> score = 1.0
>     Jul 24  ==> score = 2.0
>     Jul 27  ==> score = 3.0
>     Jul 31  ==> score = 4.0
>     Aug 07  ==> score = 5.0
>
>I have to assume that there were bounces on those days to this
>particular address.


Yes.

Presumably your script gets this info from Mailman's 'bounce' log which
contains a lot more relevant information. Or if you get it directly
from the list, you might consider getting it from the bounce log
instead.


>I cannot tell from the syslog on the smart mailer
>to which Mailman sends all its outbound mail, as this address is on
>a MS Exchange Server, and Exchange will accept all of the mail and
>then reject some that it does not like.  Exchange does not do an SMTP
>5xx-level reject during the SMTP portion of the inter-mailer dialog.


But presumably it logs somewhere that it returned a DSN to the
listname-bounces address.


>There was subsequent mail to this list
>
>     Aug 14
>     Aug 21
>
>I do not know if there were bounces from these two postings, as the
>bounce score for the address in question remained at 5.0.


There were no bounces as there was no delivery attempt to this user.

The bounce_score_threshold for this list is 5.0, so the user in
question had delivery disabled by bounce on Aug 7. You should have
been notified of this on Aug 7 (bounce_notify_owner_on_disable is
Yes). Perhaps that notice got lost or overlooked or
bounce_notify_owner_on_disable was changed subsequent to the disabling
bounce.
	

>This morning I received mail from Mailman that this particular address
>had been unsubscribed from the list.


Because the user had been sent the 3 bounce_you_are_disabled_warnings
on Aug 7, Aug 14 and Aug 21, and had not logged on and re-enabled
delivery by Aug 28.


>Here are the bounce settings for
>this list:
>
>     bounce_processing: Yes
>     bounce_score_threshold: 5.0
>     bounce_info_stale_after: 40
>     bounce_you_are_disabled_warnings: 3
>     bounce_you_are_disabled_warnings_interval : 7
>
>     bounce_unrecognized_goes_to_list_owner: Yes
>     bounce_notify_owner_on_disable: Yes
>     bounce_notify_owner_on_removal: Yes
>
>I would have expected an unsubscribe message on Aug 08, the morning
>after the bounce score reached 5.0.  I do not understand why the
>unsubscribe occurred this morning.


As I explain above, when the user reaches threshold, delivery is
disabled by bounce. The user is not removed for another
bounce_you_are_disabled_warnings x
bounce_you_are_disabled_warnings_interval (3 x 7 = 21 in this case)
days.

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