Unknown user again

[Julian Field]

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Okay, there's a different approach you could use for what you explain below.

What you can do is write a tiny little Custom Function in MailScanner that
looks at the subject line of the message, and if it is along the lines of
"Returned mail: see transcript for details" or "Delivery Status
Notification \(Failure\)" then put the outgoing message in a queue you
never deliver. There are many ways of achieving the same effect in
MailScanner, this just happens to be very similar to one I wrote earlier
this week for my own site.

What I wanted to do was to put all delivery failure messages in a queue
that is run a lot slower than the main outgoing queue.

You could use the same thing, but with a cron job that just deletes all the
files in the extra queue every hour or so.

If you want to see how to do that, reply to this and confirm that this will
solve your problem for now. I don't want to post (and write) a whole bunch
of code and setup for you if it's not what you want.

At 19:21 20/10/2004, you wrote:
>Thank you for the responses so far.  I apologize for being  a little dense,
>so please bear with me.
>
>I think I have the LDAP part down.
>
>My other question is somewhat different of the LDAP question above.  I think
>I understand that doing the LDAP routing piece will fix my problem, however,
>it will take some time to get it going.  The short term fix I was looking
>for is the ability to have mailscanner or sendmail after it has tried to
>relay an email to another server where the user does not exist, to not try
>and reply back to the sender that the address does not exist.  Basically my
>servers are accepting all email for a domain, scanning it, then forwarding
>it on.  In 50% of the cases, the email is destined to a non-existant address
>and I get a 550 message, so I try to send it back to the sender.  For now I
>just want to drop all of those when I get the 550 back.  I still will accept
>and scan all email destined for that domain.  I know it is not perfect, but
>I will stop spamming others with my "unknown user" replies.
>
>Thanks for bearing with me.
>
>bill anderson
>
>----- Original Message -----
>From: "Julian Field" <mailscanner at ECS.SOTON.AC.UK>
>To: <MAILSCANNER at JISCMAIL.AC.UK>
>Sent: Wednesday, October 20, 2004 11:01 AM
>Subject: Re: Unknown user again
>
>
> > At 18:47 20/10/2004, you wrote:
> > >When you say local db file, are you refering to the accessdb file in
> > >sendmail?
> >
> > No, a separate one created for the job.
> >
> > >   So, if I can paraphrase what you just said.  Using some sort of
> > >script that get's a list of emails from the various email servers, some
> > >LDAP, some not.  Compile this list into an accessdb file for use by
> > >sendmail?
> >
> > Not into an accessdb, but into a db file that describes where to send
>email
> > for all of your users. It's basically all in the FAQ at
> > http://www.sng.ecs.soton.ac.uk/mailscanner/serve/cache/270.html
> > The setup described there is for getting a routing database out of an
> > Exchange server running Active Directory, but the sendmail setup is
>exactly
> > the same.
> >
> > >Is there anyway to have sendmail / mailscanner drop 550 errors it
>receives
> > >from the other mail servers?  I want to fix my short term problem.
> >
> > Yes, by doing this. If the rcpt address isn't in the ldap (but actually a
> > db file) routing table, the message gets rejected at SMTP time.
> >
> > >----- Original Message -----
> > >From: "Julian Field" <mailscanner at ECS.SOTON.AC.UK>
> > >To: <MAILSCANNER at JISCMAIL.AC.UK>
> > >Sent: Wednesday, October 20, 2004 10:27 AM
> > >Subject: Re: Unknown user again
> > >
> > >
> > > > There is a tweak on option (1). You can use the LDAP routing setup,
> > >without
> > > > *actually* using LDAP to build it. So you could have a script run from
> > >cron
> > > > that queried each of the servers somehow, and built a local db file of
>all
> > > > the valid addresses it should accept mail for. Then you use the LDAP
> > > > routing setup to use this local db file.
> > > >
> > > > At 18:18 20/10/2004, you wrote:
> > > > >1)  LDAP - many of the the servers don't support LDAP.  The ability
>to
> > >build
> > > > >a comprehnsive LDAP server is outside of our scope.
> > > > >
> > > > >1)  Is there anyway I can tell MailScanner and/or sendmail to not
>respond
> > >to
> > > > >a 550 unknown user error?  Bascially Mailscanner tries to deliver an
> > >email
> > > > >to an unknown user.  Once it gets the 550 error, it drops it.  I know
>the
> > > > >downside of what if it was an honest mistake, the sender would not be
> > > > >notified.  I would like to do this on a domain by domain basis.
> > > > >
> > > > >2) Can I talk to multiple LDAP databases depending on what domain the
> > > > >address is destined to.

--
Julian Field
www.MailScanner.info
Professional Support Services at www.MailScanner.biz
MailScanner thanks transtec Computers for their support
Buy the MailScanner book at www.MailScanner.info/store

PGP footprint: EE81 D763 3DB0 0BFD E1DC 7222 11F6 5947 1415 B654

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