Re: How getmail deals with delivery errors and with bounce e-mails

On Tuesday, November 3, 2020 9:06 PM, Charles Cazabon <[email protected]> wrote:
> Internet mail is complicated. Charging in and saying "I don't understand
> why everyone says don't do X, I'm just going to do X" makes life miserable for
> all your fellow mail administrators. Here's a secret: lots of mail
> administrators, when they start receiving garbage messages because someone has
> ignored best practices, will immediately killfile all email from the domain
> where such message existed. Voila, no more problem mail from that newbie
> mail admin.
>
> I've got several hundred domains killfiled that way, but I only run my own
> personal mail. I've known some mail admins that have more than a million
> domains going straight to the round file. If you start generating these
> invalid, bogus bounce messages - well, you'll probably end up with at least
> some of your outgoing mail going to /dev/null, and you'll never know it,
> because they don't send bounce messages in response to invalid crap.
>
> Sorry if this seems cruel to you. I, and others here, have been trying to
> educate you on best practices, but you don't seem willing to take that advice.
> If you want complete, in-depth answers with full sourcing on the why behind
> those best practices, you're going to have to do a lot (a lot - 50 years of
> internet mail...) of research, or perhaps pay a consultant to write them for
> you. I and others on this list aren't going to put 50 hours into educating
> you for free.
>
> Charles

R. Diez,

Charles has been incredibly gracious with his time to provide many detailed responses to your questions, I can only hope that you will listen and take the encouragement being offered. Old hands learned long ago that it was necessary to read the RFCs, code from various reference implementations, and follow the discussions on mailing lists. Younger, less experienced folks get lulled into a false sense of security by things that appear to "just work" & so do not think it worthwhile to spend the effort necessary to learn. You may take my comment as more "vague historical references", but hopefully the effort we've put in to encouraging you to read and learn will pay off!

Best wishes on your journey.

--Larry