fetchmail "X-Fetchmail-Warning" for mail from a mailinglist address

[Matt Hansen]

On Fri, 2004-06-11 at 09:37, James Wilkinson wrote:
> 
> Could you post the "Received" headers from a typical list e-mail? It
> would make things much clearer.

Here's the headers from when it's passed from redhat's servers to my
ISP's mail servers to my server (with a couple details changed for
privacy):

Received:  from localhost (my.home.lan [127.0.0.1]) by my.home.lan
(8.xx.xx/8.xx.xx) with ESMTP id i5B0nsKn017426 for <matt at localhost>;
Fri, 11 Jun 2004 10:23:26 +1000
Received:  from mail.optusnet.com.au [211.29.132.250] by localhost with
POP3 (fetchmail-6.2.5 polling mail.optusnet.com.au account helios82) for
matt at localhost (multi-drop); Fri, 11 Jun 2004 10:23:26 +1000 (EST)
Received:  from hormel.redhat.com (hormel.redhat.com [209.132.177.30])
by mail001.syd.optusnet.com.au (8.11.6p2/8.11.6) with ESMTP id
i5B0Lh819703 for <helios82 at optushome.com.au>; Fri, 11 Jun 2004 10:21:44
+1000

So it goes: redhat -> my ISP mail server -> fetchmail -> my mail server
->procmail -> matt's mail spool.
Another interesting point I'm not sure about is why fetchmail thinks
matt at localhost is a multidrop account? .fetchmailrc only points to user
matt..
> (In particular, the mention of a matt at localhost sounds like something
> that your sendmail has introduced after fetchmail has played with it).
> 
> > My fairly basic .fetchmailrc:
> > 
> > set no bouncemail
> >  
> > poll mail.optusnet.com.au proto pop3
> >      user 'helios82' there with password 'mypass' is user matt here
> 
> What the manpage doesn't make too clear is that fetchmail doesn't treat
> all the received lines as authoritative. In your case, it will be
> looking for mail.optusnet.com.au in a line like
> Received: from example.com by mail.optusnet.com.au
>     for helios82 at optusnet.com.au
Well specifically for redhat list email, for me this line is always:
Received: from hormel.redhat.com by
               mail0xx.syd.optusnet.com.au for helios82 at optushome.com.au

mail0xx.syd.optusnet.com.au is usually in the range mail001-mail012.
Also, mail.syd.optusnet.com.au is an alias for the canonical
mail.optusnet.comn.au

> 
> Sometimes (for example, on my ISP, Demon) the name you use to access the
> server isn't what the server itself thinks it is called. In this case,
> you need to use the aka keyword to tell fetchmail what
> mail.optusnet.com.au thinks it is called. So you might have
> poll mail.optusnet.com.au proto pop3 aka mailstore
>      user 'helios82' there with password 'mypass' is user matt here
> if the POP3 server thinks it is called mailstore.

Well shouldn't the server be using its canonical name to reference
itself? As I wrote above, this is "mail.optusnet.com.au". However, if I
add an "aka syd.optusnet.com.au" to my .fetchmailrc this interestingly
changes the "X-Fetchmail-Warning" to:
X-Fetchmail-Warning:  recipient address helios82 at optushome.com.au didn't
match any local name. 

This would reasonably assume that the "Received:" line containing
mail0xx.syd.optusnet.com.au is now being looked at and sees the
recipient address "helios82 at optushome.com.au" now instead of
fedora-list at redhat.com. Then I just out of curiosity added
"optushome.com.au" to the aka line and the warning changed to:
X-Fetchmail-Warning:  no recipient addresses matched declared local
names
> 
> If mail to you always comes through several mailservers, and not all of
> them have usable "received" headers, I believe that you can point "aka"
> at any one.

Does it sound correct to you to add an aka for "syd.optusnet.com.au" as
I wrote above? It's certainly made a difference with the warning
message. (But unfortunately didn't fix it..)
> 
> There is a good reason for this behaviour: Fedora List e-mails have the
> line
> Received: from int-mx1.corp.redhat.com (int-mx1.corp.redhat.com
>         [172.16.52.254])
>         by listman.util.phx.redhat.com (8.12.10/8.12.10) with ESMTP id
>         i56B8tNv007310 for <fedora-list at listman.util.phx.redhat.com>;
>         Sun, 6 Jun 2004 07:08:55 -0400
> which is obviously *before* fedora-list is expanded to the individual
> recipients. So fetchmail won't assume that line is any use to it.
> 
> Hope this helps,
> 
> James.

Thanks for the input.
-Matt
-- 
"Would you buy a car with the hood welded shut?"
 - Bob Young on the benefits of the open source development model.
mhelios - www.fedoraforum.org 

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