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René Pfeiffer [lynx at luchs.at]
Hello, TAG!
Every once in a while I am looking for a good vacation mailer that can read emails as good as I can while I am as far away from my mailbox as possible. I already tried
- vacation from Sendmail, - the Sieve vacation mailer that can be enabled in Cyrus and - a Perl script I wrote which is buried under the rubble of the company I worked for many years ago.What are your favourite vacation mailers that cause the least trouble with auto-generated emails? Do you have any preferences or experiences?
Best wishes, René.
Thomas Adam [thomas at edulinux.homeunix.org]
On Thu, Jul 19, 2007 at 12:55:01AM +0200, René Pfeiffer wrote:
> - vacation from Sendmail,
This is a classic and one I have been known to use (it's a very very old program you know), but...
> What are your favourite vacation mailers that cause the least trouble > with auto-generated emails? Do you have any preferences or experiences?
They're so annoying, it's untrue. I hate these things, and they should be banished from the face of the Earth. Not to mention a lot of the brain-dead ones repeatedly send the same stupid note of: "I'm not in the office" over and over again, because the user who buggered off is signed up to some mailing list, or rather.
-- Thomas Adam "He wants you back, he screams into the night air, like a fireman going through a window that has no fire." -- Mike Myers, "This Poem Sucks".
René Pfeiffer [lynx at luchs.at]
On Jul 19, 2007 at 0059 +0100, Thomas Adam appeared and said:
> On Thu, Jul 19, 2007 at 12:55:01AM +0200, René Pfeiffer wrote: > > - vacation from Sendmail, > This is a classic and one I have been known to use (it's a very very old > program you know), but...
Classic means stable, mostly. Which is good in this case, and vacation works very well.
> > What are your favourite vacation mailers that cause the least trouble > > with auto-generated emails? Do you have any preferences or experiences? > They're so annoying, it's untrue. I hate these things, and they should be > banished from the face of the Earth. Not to mention a lot of the brain-dead > ones repeatedly send the same stupid note of: [...]
That's the reason why I usually never use one. However building a sensible autoresponder that avoids loops and doesn't talk on decently formatted mailing lists shouldn't be too hard to implement (I know that this is the perfect phrase to invite trouble). It's just that a lot of people are used to having autoresponders because their neighbour has one and so they need one too. Sysadmins know this vicious circle, that's why I asked for experience with these beasts.
Best, René.
Samuel Bisbee-vonKaufmann [sbisbee at bu.edu]
On Thu, 2007-07-19 at 03:03 +0200, René Pfeiffer wrote:
> On Jul 19, 2007 at 0059 +0100, Thomas Adam appeared and said:[snip]
> > They're so annoying, it's untrue. I hate these things, and they should be > > banished from the face of the Earth. Not to mention a lot of the brain-dead > > ones repeatedly send the same stupid note of: [...] > > That's the reason why I usually never use one. However building a > sensible autoresponder that avoids loops and doesn't talk on decently > formatted mailing lists shouldn't be too hard to implement (I know that > this is the perfect phrase to invite trouble). It's just that a lot of > people are used to having autoresponders because their neighbour has one > and so they need one too. Sysadmins know this vicious circle, that's why > I asked for experience with these beasts. >
My primary issue with autoresponders is when conversations ensue anyway. The first notice was fine and can be helpful (I admit, I have found out people close to me were leaving via autoresponses, even though they told me 5min ago), but once we both reply and I receive a second-third-fourth-etc. notice I become annoyed, especially since they are replying to me _while on vacation_. Suggestion: pick a better place to vacation.
As for loops and mailing list spam, most of that can be filtered out at either the server or recipient-client level. Most mailing lists use sane code that filters such vacation announcements anyway (pre-flame disclaimer: from my experience).
-- Samuel Kotel Bisbee-vonKaufmann | "What is E.T. short for? Because he's got OFTC.net, Network Operator | itty bitty legs." --Prairie Home Companion Linux Gazette, Assoc. Editor | www.geecs.org/~sbisbee
René Pfeiffer [lynx at luchs.at]
On Jul 21, 2007 at 0105 -0400, Samuel Bisbee-vonKaufmann appeared and said:
> On Thu, 2007-07-19 at 03:03 +0200, René Pfeiffer wrote: > [snip] > > That's the reason why I usually never use one. However building a > > sensible autoresponder that avoids loops and doesn't talk on decently > > formatted mailing lists shouldn't be too hard to implement [...] > My primary issue with autoresponders is when conversations ensue anyway. > The first notice was fine and can be helpful (I admit, I have found out > people close to me were leaving via autoresponses, even though they told > me 5min ago), but once we both reply and I receive a > second-third-fourth-etc. notice I become annoyed, especially since they > are replying to me _while on vacation_. Suggestion: pick a better > place to vacation.
I know what you are talking about and that's the exact situation I want to avoid. One reply per sender per vacation is more than sufficient and since I won't touch my mailbox while being away replying while the auto-responder is active won't occur. I can't speak for the people who regularly request auto-responders though.
> As for loops and mailing list spam, most of that can be filtered out at > either the server or recipient-client level. Most mailing lists use sane > code that filters such vacation announcements anyway (pre-flame > disclaimer: from my experience).
I am not worried about proper and sane mailing list servers. I get a lot of mailings from vendors with product announcements and other things. Most of them use software that produces strange emails and I am not sure if they can handle standards.
I am testing the vacation program with another account and told it to generate mails with the envelope sender "<>". So far I didn't run into any problems. I guess I have go give it a try with my standard account.
Best, René.
Karl-Heinz Herrmann [khh at khherrmann.de]
On Sat, 21 Jul 2007 11:31:59 +0200 René Pfeiffer <lynx@luchs.at> wrote:
> to avoid. One reply per sender per vacation is more than sufficient and > since I won't touch my mailbox while being away replying while the
Hmm.... quite a while back I used procmail which took care of NOT to reply to list-mails and vacation which took care of the once-only vacation message. procmail has a filter rule (or at least there were templates out there) to filter for any hint of being a list-mail.
K.-H.
Ben Okopnik [ben at linuxgazette.net]
On Sat, Jul 21, 2007 at 12:07:46PM +0200, Karl-Heinz Herrmann wrote:
> On Sat, 21 Jul 2007 11:31:59 +0200 > René Pfeiffer <lynx@luchs.at> wrote: > > to avoid. One reply per sender per vacation is more than sufficient and > > since I won't touch my mailbox while being away replying while the > > Hmm.... quite a while back I used procmail which took care of NOT to > reply to list-mails and vacation which took care of the once-only > vacation message. procmail has a filter rule (or at least there were > templates out there) to filter for any hint of being a list-mail.
I'm glad you mentioned that, Karl-Heinz; it reminded me of what, where, and how. The recipe is listed and explained in 'man procmailex'; it keeps a database of the 'already pinged' addresses in "vacation.cache", and does (theoretically) what you want. Note: I have not tested this myself.
SHELL=/bin/sh # for other shells, this might need adjustment
:0 Whc: vacation.lock
# Perform a quick check to see if the mail was addressed to us
* $^To:.*\<$\LOGNAME\>
# Donât reply to daemons and mailinglists
* !^FROM_DAEMON
# Mail loops are evil
* !^X-Loop: your@own.mail.address
| formail -rD 8192 vacation.cache
:0 ehc # if the name was not in the cache
| (formail -rI"Precedence: junk" \
-A"X-Loop: your@own.mail.address" ; \
echo "I received your mail,"; \
echo "but I wonât be back until Monday."; \
echo "-- "; cat $HOME/.signature \
) | $SENDMAIL -oi -t
-- * Ben Okopnik * Editor-in-Chief, Linux Gazette * https://LinuxGazette.NET *
René Pfeiffer [lynx at luchs.at]
On Jul 21, 2007 at 1357 -0400, Ben Okopnik appeared and said:
> [...] > I'm glad you mentioned that, Karl-Heinz; it reminded me of what, where, > and how. The recipe is listed and explained in 'man procmailex'; it > keeps a database of the 'already pinged' addresses in "vacation.cache", > and does (theoretically) what you want. Note: I have not tested this > myself.
Sounds nice. I guess I'll give it a try or use the vacation program. I guess proper testing has to be done with the kind of mails some of my users or I get. Maybe you'll notice my tests too. ;)
The only thing I don't like about this way of auto-responder is that fact that you have to tie it to user accounts. I still stick to Sieve when it comes to Cyrus (and soon Dovecot). Plugging an auto-responder into Postfix as plugin doesn't sound promising as some friend suggested.
Thanks, René.