Matthias Andree <ma(_at_)dt(_dot_)e-technik(_dot_)uni-dortmund(_dot_)de>:
"Andreas M. Kirchwitz" <amk(_at_)krell(_dot_)zikzak(_dot_)de> writes:
1. By default, it deletes mail.
What surprises me most is the fact that fetchmail's default
configuration is to delete any undeliverable mail without
any notification when the transfer to the destination
SMTP server fails with certain error codes.
The manual calls it "antispam" feature, but - for example -
getting an SMTP error code 550 doesn't necessarily mean that
it's spam.
What MTA yields 550 when the mail is in fact deliverable?
Indeed, "no such user" (which is a configuration error, such as a typo
in the "user hans is andreas here" part) will yield 550 in many cases,
but this should be tested for before putting a system into production.
It could be a syntactically incorrect header,
What should fetchmail do instead?
or a temporary DNS problem.
A temporary DNS problem ("no response") should give 4XX class replies,
not 5XX. If your SMTP listener returns 5XX on temporary problems, it's
misconfigured or broken.
Okay, this can be disabled with "antispam -1" (what only seems
to work if used in the fetchmailrc file, but not if used on the
command line ;-) I had expected that "antispam -1" is the
default (because it's much safer this way).
I'd second that this be changed for fetchmail 6.0.0.
Now, wait a second, Matthias.
Your response doesn't seem consistent. First, you appear to argue
that deleting undeliverable mail is OK because there is no other
obvious fallback action. Then you turn around and suggest that
antispam -1 ought to be the default.
Huh?
--
<a href="http://www.tuxedo.org/~esr/";>Eric S. Raymond</a>