Bug#457096: bounce all not half

[Marc Haber]

tags #457096 wontfix
thanks

On Thu, Dec 20, 2007 at 02:01:13AM +0800, jidanni at jidanni.org wrote:
> It is driving me nuts that I can send malformed messages to the
> Internet.
> 
> Can't we have the following error stop the message in its tracks,
> instead of sending still to half the recipients?
> 
> ==============
>   A message that you sent contained one or more recipient addresses that
>   were incorrectly constructed:
>    <rr at ii.p> "failee": malformed address: "failee" may not follow <rr at ii.p>
>   This address has been ignored. The other addresses in the message were
>   syntactically valid and have been passed on for an attempt at delivery.
>   ------ This is a copy of your message, including all the headers. ------
>   To: <rr at ii.p> "failee"
>   Cc: bob at goodaddress.zzz ...
> ==============
> 
> The problem is those half might attempt to reply to those bad headers,
> when all along we could have cleaned up the message and instead sent a
> good copy.

Generally, an MTA should transfer messages, not play Syntax Police.

> Anyway, all in all what I object to is "The other addresses in the
> message were syntactically valid and have been passed on for an
> attempt at delivery."

This is exim's documented behavior, the error message is pretty clean.
Kindly take this upstream; I am neither going to take this Upstream
myself nor am I going to modify this part of exim's behavior in Debian
until Upstream says it's ok to do so.

> At least please tell me how to configure exim4 to cause the whole
> thing to fail. Thanks.

I don't know how to do this. Please ask on one of the support mailing
lists.

> I found some commands, maybe this:
>   # Deny unless the address list headers are syntactically correct.
>   # If you enable this, you might reject legitimate mail.

Sounds good.

> but I only want it to happen on outgoing mail, not incoming.

Exim does not know whether a message is "outgoing" or "incoming". A
message always comes in first and goes out last. You need to modify
your ACLs to give them a hint about when is a message outgoing or
incoming.

I guess that you think "outgoing/incoming" with respect to your site,
so an outgoing message might be identified by coming in from an
internal IP adress or via authenticated SMTP, and an incoming message
might be identified by being addressed to one of your local domains.

Once you have identified a condition that says "this message is
outgoing in my definition", add verify header syntax.

> * exim4/dc_eximconfig_configtype: mail sent by smarthost; received via
>   fetchmail

No idea what you are trying to say.

Greetings
Marc

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