Changing Return-Path

Changing Return-Path

[Anders Melchiorsen]

I have a mailing list that tells me I cannot post unless I change my
Return-Path to be equal to the address I am receiving the list to.

Can I change it - and should I? I am not at all certain that this
would be correct behaviour since that list is already doing a few
annoying things (adding [] prefixes to subjects and using a "broken
Reply-To").

-- 
Regards, Anders
(address is valid)

First Law of Travel:
It always takes longer to get there than to get back.

Re: Changing Return-Path

[Matt Armstrong]

Anders Melchiorsen <and@kampsax.dtu.dk> writes:

> I have a mailing list that tells me I cannot post unless I change my
> Return-Path to be equal to the address I am receiving the list to.
> 
> Can I change it - and should I? I am not at all certain that this
> would be correct behaviour since that list is already doing a few
> annoying things (adding [] prefixes to subjects and using a "broken
> Reply-To").

It's a closed mailing list.  I assume by Return-Path they really mean
the From: header.

Take a look at gnus-posting-styles (in the Gnus info) -- it may do
what you want.

For instance, at work, I set gnus-posting-styles to the following so
that when I read my IMAP mail on my ISP account from work I reply to
it as if I were answering from my ISP.

(setq gnus-posting-styles
      '(("^nnimap\\+best"
         (address "mattdav+matt@best.com"))))

-- 
matta.

Re: Changing Return-Path

[Anders Melchiorsen]

Matt Armstrong <matta@geoworks.com> writes:

> Anders Melchiorsen <and@kampsax.dtu.dk> writes:
> 
> > I have a mailing list that tells me I cannot post unless I change my
> > Return-Path to be equal to the address I am receiving the list to.
>
> It's a closed mailing list.  I assume by Return-Path they really mean
> the From: header.
> 

They really do mean the Return-Path: header. They bounce mail if it
does not equal the adress I am subscribed with.

What I was wondering was whether the Return-Path: should be my e-mail
address or the account I am posting from (which is unreachable due to
a firewall).

-- 
Regards, Anders               <URL:http://www.kampsax.dtu.dk/~and/>

Re: Changing Return-Path

[Frank D. Cringle]

Anders Melchiorsen <and@kampsax.dtu.dk> writes:
> What I was wondering was whether the Return-Path: should be my e-mail
> address or the account I am posting from (which is unreachable due to
> a firewall).

If the Return-Path is unreachable due to a firewall, lots of mail
servers will reject the mail, whether the recipient is a mailing list
or not.  Postmasters don't like accepting mail that they won't be able 
to bounce later if the delivery fails.

-- 
Frank Cringle,      fdc@cliwe.ping.de
voice: (+49 2304) 467101; fax: 943357

Re: Changing Return-Path

[Matt Armstrong]

Anders Melchiorsen <and@kampsax.dtu.dk> writes:

> Matt Armstrong <matta@geoworks.com> writes:
> 
> > Anders Melchiorsen <and@kampsax.dtu.dk> writes:
> > 
> > > I have a mailing list that tells me I cannot post unless I change my
> > > Return-Path to be equal to the address I am receiving the list to.
> >
> > It's a closed mailing list.  I assume by Return-Path they really mean
> > the From: header.
> 
> They really do mean the Return-Path: header. They bounce mail if it
> does not equal the adress I am subscribed with.

That's pretty strict.


> What I was wondering was whether the Return-Path: should be my
> e-mail address or the account I am posting from (which is
> unreachable due to a firewall).

The Return-Path: is not set by Gnus, but by sendmail (or whatever MTA
is in use).  If it isn't a valid e-mail address, then it is a problem
with the MTA.

But this also means you can't really get around your problem.


-- 
matta

Re: Changing Return-Path

[Karl Kleinpaste]

Anders Melchiorsen <and@kampsax.dtu.dk> writes:
>> What I was wondering was whether the Return-Path: should be my
>> e-mail address or the account I am posting from (which is
>> unreachable due to a firewall).

Matt Armstrong <matta@geoworks.com> writes:
> The Return-Path: is not set by Gnus, but by sendmail

This is similar to the difficulty some of us have with Gnus'
generation of Sender.

This one is partly Gnus' "fault", if you can call it that.  sendmail
is invoked with `"-f" (user-login-name)' in message.el, to set the
origin user positively; a typical sendmail installation will then
adjust that to be your-name@your.host.where.you.sent.the.mail.  For
many (most?) of us, that's not really quite desirable, since (e.g.) my
Return-Path (which is the envelope origin from SMTP Mail From:<>,
converted to a header upon delivery) shows karl@pocari-sweat.jprc.com
but my normal address is karl@jprc.com.

The only way to hack around this is to modify the function
message-send-mail-with-sendmail from message.el, to substitute the
"-f" argument with a string that's more appropriate for you.

With regard to the standards for Return-Path, RFC822 observes that it
should be a _route_ back to the originator, i.e., it should show relay
hops; RFC1123 in turn says that failure notifications should be sent
back to the originator with the route information deleted, that is,
"If the address is an explicit source route, it SHOULD be stripped
down to its final hop."  ???  Then what's the point of providing the
source route in the first place?

It seems to me that Return-Path's value has become very limited in an
environment where source-routed mail is vastly deprecated, and just
plain not supported by many.  I know that, when I did serious sendmail
work years ago, I shot all source routes on sight.

You could very well substitute the use of (user-login-name) for the
"-f" argument in message-send-mail-with-sendmail with the variable
user-mail-address; the result should give the effect you need, and not
create any interoperability problems -- mail will still show a proper
way to return to you.

That said, this mailing list's requirement of matching Return-Path is
indeed pretty peculiar.

--karl