From owner-freebsd-questions Sun Feb 2 19:17:22 1997 Return-Path: Received: (from root@localhost) by freefall.freebsd.org (8.8.5/8.8.5) id TAA04281 for questions-outgoing; Sun, 2 Feb 1997 19:17:22 -0800 (PST) Received: from mail.calweb.com (mail.calweb.com [208.131.56.11]) by freefall.freebsd.org (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id TAA04259; Sun, 2 Feb 1997 19:17:13 -0800 (PST) Received: from hell.gigo.com (hell.gigo.com [207.173.133.59]) by mail.calweb.com (8.8.5/8.8.5) with SMTP id TAA20256; Sun, 2 Feb 1997 19:16:33 -0800 (PST) Message-Id: <3.0.32.19970202191733.006b6fa0@pop.calweb.com> X-Sender: jfesler@pop.calweb.com X-Mailer: Windows Eudora Pro Version 3.0 (32) Date: Sun, 02 Feb 1997 19:19:24 -0800 To: Cliff Addy , freebsd-questions@freebsd.org, freebsd-isp@freebsd.org From: Jason Fesler Subject: Re: mailbot wars Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Sender: owner-questions@freebsd.org X-Loop: FreeBSD.org Precedence: bulk At 09:50 PM 2/2/97 -0500, Cliff Addy wrote: >I was fiddling with creating a mail autoresponder and can't see how to solve >a problem. I was using the .forward mechanism to pipe email into a perl >script and autorespond to the sender. It works fine, but what happens if I >receive email from a person running an autoresponder themselves? Then my >mailbot emails a confirmation to them, their mailbot responds to me, mine to >theirs, and all hell breaks loose. :-) 1: Don't ever respond when the "Precedence: Bulk" header exists :-) 2: IT would be good to keep a history of recent people who mailed you, and not double-respond. Ie, keep an 8k or 16k or whatever-K cache of email addresses. If the address already exists, don't send to them again. Make sure your initial autoresponse states that fact. An example of this via procmail, is in the procmailex man page. >Any and all suggestions appreciated. Well, maybe not *all* suggestions :) Be sure to put in a twit file ability :-) Jason Fesler owner of the now-dead "infobot@infomania.com" autoresponder/service agent