fetchmail-devel

[fetchmail-devel] Patch to the man page

[Rob M. <rob...@gm...>]

Please find attached a quick patch that:

1) Documents in the man page (rather than just the FAQ) the fact that
socks support is a compile time option

2) Makes use of the envelope header in the multidrop example in the
hope that it'll encourage others to use it :)

3) Provides advice in the MDA section that qmail-inject should be
avoided (as per Matthias's regular comments)

For future features can I suggest/request that:

a) In multi-drop mode if the envelope header isn't explicitly
specified a warning is logged ("WARNING: Multidrop mode selected but
no envelope header specified.  This may lead to incorrectly delivered
email")

b) When the envelope header is specified, but it isn't found, a
warning is logged and the mail is forwarded to the postmaster
("WARNING: Envelope header $HEADER found, cannot identify the
recipient.  Forwarding to the postmaster")

-- 
                 Please keep list traffic on the list.

Rob MacGregor
      Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he
        doesn't become a monster.                  Friedrich Nietzsche

Re: [fetchmail-devel] Patch to the man page

[Matthias A. <mat...@gm...>]

Rob MacGregor schrieb:

> Please find attached a quick patch that:

Thank you.

> 1) Documents in the man page (rather than just the FAQ) the fact that
> socks support is a compile time option

OK, added a remark that socks provides no interfaces for run-time
configuration that fetchmail could use.

> 2) Makes use of the envelope header in the multidrop example in the
> hope that it'll encourage others to use it :)

OK

> 3) Provides advice in the MDA section that qmail-inject should be
> avoided (as per Matthias's regular comments)

Well, the issue at hand was that qmail-inject was not being given the
recipient as command-line options, but instead had to rely on parsing
the headers. This kind of abuse can happen with the sendmail interface
too. I've revised the whole --mda action based on your patch and made
the distinction between missing the %T and qmail-inject's nonstandard
interfaces clearer.

> For future features can I suggest/request that:
> 
> a) In multi-drop mode if the envelope header isn't explicitly
> specified a warning is logged ("WARNING: Multidrop mode selected but
> no envelope header specified.  This may lead to incorrectly delivered
> email")

Looks we already have this for recent 6.3.X releases.

Perhaps we could make the "no 6.2.X support" policy even stricter (and
not let users get away with "I know I have to update") for this list to
avoid discussing fixed issues like this one :-)

fetchmail.c (SVN version on branches/BRANCH_6-3):

            /*
             * can't handle multidrop mailboxes without "envelope"
             * option, this causes truckloads full of support complaints
             * "all mail forwarded to postmaster"
             */
            if (MULTIDROP(ctl) && !ctl->server.envelope)
            {
                report(stderr, GT_("warning: multidrop for %s requires
envelope option!\n"), ctl->server.pollname);
                report(stderr, GT_("warning: Do not ask for support if
all mail goes to postmaster!\n"));
            }

> b) When the envelope header is specified, but it isn't found, a
> warning is logged and the mail is forwarded to the postmaster
> ("WARNING: Envelope header $HEADER found, cannot identify the
> recipient.  Forwarding to the postmaster")

Will consider, it's on the 6.4 TODO.txt.

THank you!

Best,
MA