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Re: Greg, you're tryin' too hard

  • From: Jay R. Ashworth
  • Date: Mon Jan 29 17:16:11 2001

On Mon, Jan 29, 2001 at 04:57:47PM -0500, Greg A. Woods wrote:
> [[ Sorry folks, but because Jay is being stupid, I'm going to be stupid too.  ]]

<ahem>

Apologies to all; you know how procmail works; that's why I changed the
subject line.

> [[ at least I set the Reply-To:  !!! ]]

Yes, to an address I can't get to.  Thank you so much.

> [ On Monday, January 29, 2001 at 10:33:34 (-0500), Jay R. Ashworth wrote: ]
> > Subject: Re: Greg, you're tryin' too hard
> >
> > If a A record with no MX record was A Bad Thing, sendmail, postfix, and
> > M-Sexchange would no doubt have quit delivering to them years ago.
> 
> Postfix, Exim, *and* Smail all include the ability to do identical (or
> at least very similar) checks on the SMTP protocol commands and
> parameters.

I was discussing default configurations, obviously.

But you've yet to justify why an A record isn't enough to deliver
mail.

> Folks like me who don't like spam yet seem to get a lot of it targetted
> at them (and/or their domain -- it was a good idea at the time, before
> the Internet took off! :-), are entirely likely to enable those checks,
> which means folks who don't pay attention to the details in their mailer
> and DNS configurations will lose.

I don't *do* the mailer configurations for the Freenet; I'm a Usenet
guy.

> I don't care if one or two people can't send me e-mail so long as the
> majority works (and let me tell you, the majority certainly works!) --
> that's their problem, not mine.

Well, no, it' doesn't work that way.  If you can't justify it under the
published standards, then it doesn't *matter* what quantity of
connections it breaks, it is *still* broken.

Period.  End of report.

>                                 Unless your mailer is listed in one of
> the RBLs, I'm not going to permanently block your e-mail if you're
> willing to fix your configurations.

I would be willing to trouble the guy whose job that is if you
presented any reasonable evidence that there is "fixing" necessary; ie:
that there's anything "broken".  To date, I have seen no unequivocal
evidence that this is so.

> > BTW, Greg:  On my carbons to your two other addresses?  The envelope
> > addresses *weren't* *mine*: you were being overly picky on the *body*
> > *address*.  [ British cuss word elided to make Merit happy ] 
> 
> That would be magic beyond my capabilities since my mailer cannot look
> in the body of the message (at least not yet).

*Excuse me*?  An MTA that can't look in the body of a message?

Can I have a hit, too?

>                                                 If you're getting
> bounces from my mailer when you 'CC' another of my addresses then it's
> because your SMTP envelope sender address is bogus.  Fix it.  I'm not
> even going to bother looking in my logs to see just how bogus it is and
> recommend a way to fix it.

I CC'd all three of them; the envelope addresses on your planix and acm
forwards should be *those machines* addresses.  If they're not, then
something *is* broken, and it's not within my power to fix.

No?


You know, I hate this sort of situation.  I have two choices: shut up,
fail to defend my opinion, and hope everyone realized the problem is
yours... or reply in the only manner you've carefully limited me to,
and annoy everyone.

Thanks, Greg.  I really appreciate it.  I've gotten read off by Susan
over you twice already, too.  I knew that I shouldn't have bothered to
reply to your original message.  I knew it.

Document your assertions, chapter and verse, or don't bother to reply
to this message, 'k?

Cheers,
-- jra
-- 
Jay R. Ashworth                                                [email protected]
Member of the Technical Staff     Baylink
The Suncoast Freenet         The Things I Think
Tampa Bay, Florida        http://baylink.pitas.com             +1 727 804 5015