Matthias Andree <ma(_at_)dt(_dot_)e-technik(_dot_)uni-dortmund(_dot_)de>:
1. when fetchmail injects into an MDA, it will not send bounces (bounces
are tied to SMTP forwarding)
I would accept a patch to fix this so that MTA and MDA delivery have
uniform behavior. But I'm not at all sure it's possible.
2. fetchmail assumes the MDA can handle multiple local addresses.
The problem arises that in the past, there has not been a clear
distinction between using the MDA option to inject into real MDAs
(procmail, maildrop) -- these handle exactly ONE recipient, no more,
no less -- and abusing the MDA option to inject into a
/usr/sbin/sendmail compatible command that handles multiple
recipients.
The right answer to this problem is not to add code to fetchmail, rather
it is to write a wrapper script that behaves like sendmail (taking multiple
addresses) and calls the real MDA repeatedly to do delivery.
With the advent of alternatives to sendmail, the -oem option no longer
works to send mail.
It is neither present in the code nor recommended on the man page.
Past discussion and my current suggestions:
The MDA option should be split. There should be one MDA option (to name
a command with arguments for local delivery to a single recipient ONLY,
not for bounces), and one MTA option (as alternative to SMTP and LMTP,
to name a command with arguments for local or remote delivery; local
delivery would happen if the MDA option was unset).
I have never thought that --mda was a good idea to begin with, so I am
reluctant to add complexity to the code to "fix" it. As I said above,
the right solution is to have fetchail call a suitable wrapper script.
--
<a href="http://www.catb.org/~esr/";>Eric S. Raymond</a>