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[sieve] Error reporting, was Re: [draft-melnikov-sieve-external-lists] 3. Security Considerations, Paragraph 2

2009-09-08 09:22:10
Hi Jeffrey,

--On September 8, 2009 2:54:09 AM -0400 Jeffrey Hutzelman <jhutz(_at_)cmu(_dot_)edu> wrote:

It may be straightforward when dealing with a simple LMTP server-based
implementation, but let's please not forget that such implementations
have the
serious issue that errors reported after message data transfer cannot in
general be reflected back as an SMTP error.

No, but one could certainly treat lists referenced in this way as a part
of the data needed to run the script, and fetch them up front, before the
script begins executing.  Of course, that presumes that one can "fetch"
the list.  The problem becomes much worse when the list is a query-only
service, because then you're going to need to talk to the service while
running the script, and _that_ could fail.

This part of the thread brings up an issue we have mentioned in the past but never pursued - namely the ability to provide better error reporting.

We have talked in the past of having something equivalent to a DSN generated by the SIEVE implementation and sent to the owner of the script when runtime errors occur, so that they get immediate feedback on that with sufficient detail to know what went wrong and possibly how to fix it.

Of course sending such details to most users may not be good in practice as a lot of users have no idea that they are using SIEVE because their filtering front-end obscures that fact.

So in reality the majority of these reports would likely go to the SIEVE system admin. Chances are most SIEVE systems already have some form of error log that admins can look at, so maybe the DSN idea is not worth it. However, I think it is still worth having the discussion.

--
Cyrus Daboo

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