Re: Return path rewritten

> Good afternoon,

> We are running:
> Sun Java(tm) System Messaging Server 6.3-3.01 (built Jul 12 2007; 32bit)
> libimta.so 6.3-3.01 (built 20:10:10, Jul 12 2007; 32bit)
> SunOS zulu.unige.ch 5.10 Generic_125100-10 sun4u sparc SUNW,Sun-Fire-V440

> I am trying to debug a alias expansion problem.

> On a host I have defined in the alias file:
> bioveg-all:     </path/bioveg-grp.dis, \
>                 [BLOCKLIMIT] 300

> This works fine except when there is an invalid address
> in the dis file, an error message is sent to bioveg-all
> because the return path is changed to bioveg-all.

That's not what is happening. As documented, autoforwarders such as this report
immediate expansion errors to the autoforwarder membership. However, this does
_not_ mean that gthe return path has been changed to point to the
autoforwarder. I've been tempted to implement such a change since in some ways
it is actually the right thing to do, but there are serious looping issues that
cannot be resolved in all cases the minute you extend this to non-immediate
error reporting.

> On our pmdf host the error message was sent to the sender only.

Which we have come to realize was a bug. Problems should be reported to the
person or persons most likely to be able to fix it, and  the sender is rarely
in a position to do so.

If you want to control where errors are reported, use the [envelope_from]
nonpositional parameter and convert this from an autoforwarder into a proper
list.

If you really want errors reported to the sender (a really bad idea IMO for a
list of nonnegligable size) you can specify / as the [envelope_from] value and
the sender address will be used for error reporting.

                                Ned