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Re: Ping responder

2000-09-28 18:01:50
Vyachelsav followed up,

Z> Ok. The X-Loop: header is intended for preventing replying the autoresponder
Z> script to itself and nothing more, right?

Exactly.

Z> One more question. Should I check just X-Loop: header occurance or its
Z> specific content too? For example, X-Loop: 
ping(_dot_)robot(_at_)my(_dot_)domain

In this particular case, I think the ping responder should reject anything
with an X-Loop: header, regardless of content.  The presence of an X-Loop:
header indicates that the message was generated or distributed by a bot
rather than being addressed and typed individually by human fingers.  There
are cases where the content does matter and a recipe should reject only its
own X-Loop:, but I feel that this is not that kind.

I had said,

T> As I understand your post, Vyacheslav, that part works properly.  Something
T> else is the problem: you write to the ping responder, it sends you the ping
T> data, and for some reason you want to reply to its message.  When you start
T> to compose that reply, your MUA does not copy the X-Loop: header from the
T> ping response message.  Well, no, it wouldn't.

Z> Why it wouldn't? Because it is a custom-added header?

Because MUA's just generally don't copy headers over, except for the subject.

Z> Not quite right. The matter is I don't want to be bombed by so-called
Z> hackers that will send a bunch of ping requests in short amount of time.

Now that's a different story.  At first you asked how to avoid sending ping
responses when people send replies to earlier ping responses.

Z> But I've already dealt with this problem. Pinging is a password-protected
Z> and I am using '${FORMAIL} -D 16384 ${HOME}/help.cache' to analyze whether
Z> to send or not a ping request's help file.

Close; you need -rD there rather than -D.  -D checks Message-ID's for dupli-
cates while -rD checks for duplicate senders.  (And you don't need the braces
around the variables' names.)  The one drawback is that such a cache is of a
fixed maximum text size, and depending on total ping request volume names may
scroll off too soon or linger too long, so you might want to set up a time-
based system instead.  Time-based caches have been discussed here before, but
I don't recall any consensus on the best way to set them up.


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