Date: Sun, 2 Feb 1997 19:11:48 -0800 (PST) From: Stranger Bone <ben@narcissus.ml.org> To: Cliff Addy <fbsdlist@revelstone.jvm.com> Cc: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org, freebsd-isp@freebsd.org Subject: Re: mailbot wars Message-ID: <Pine.BSF.3.91.970202190914.721A-100000@narcissus.ml.org> In-Reply-To: <Pine.BSF.3.91.970202214405.11759A-100000@revelstone.jvm.com>
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On Sun, 2 Feb 1997, Cliff Addy wrote: > I was fiddling with creating a mail autoresponder and can't see how to solve > a problem. I was using the .forward mechanism to pipe email into a perl > script and autorespond to the sender. It works fine, but what happens if I > receive email from a person running an autoresponder themselves? Then my > mailbot emails a confirmation to them, their mailbot responds to me, mine to > theirs, and all hell breaks loose. > > Is there any way to avoid this situation? I thought of putting a particular > string in the response subject, then look for it and don't respond to email > that contains it. However, an autoresponder could respond back to me with a > generic subject, then all hell breaks loose again. I don't know if this would work, but: 1) Have the perl script save the subject line and compare it with the last subject line it saw. 2) If the two are the same, increment some counter by 1. 3) If the counter reaches 5, notify you and stop autoresponding to messages with that subject until further notice (i.e. reset by hand). Obviously there are cases where this wouldn't work, but it might be a good start. Someone will probably have a better suggestion. > Any and all suggestions appreciated. Well, maybe not *all* suggestions :) > > Cliff > > Ben The views expressed above are not those of the Worker's Compensation Board of Queensland, Australia.
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