Vacation message also works for forwards

[harro]

Hi all,

When you set a vacation message in DA, this only works when an e-mail is sent to the actual pop3 account, not to any forwards that point to that account.

If you have any/several forwards pointing to an e-mail account, then it is (very) useful if all those forwards also respond with the same vacation message when you set one.

John suggested a working solution (after a small additional modification) but it requires manual changes to two files through SSH (read: custom work by the admin): http://www.directadmin.com/forum/showthread.php?t=20309

It would be great if the vacation message script automatically checked the user's forwards list and linked all the forwards that point to the pop3 account with the vacation message setting.

This is a nice-to-have feature but it surprised me that nobody else bumped into this problem (or realised that this did not work for forwards).

Bye,

Harro

 

[nobaloney]

When you set a vacation message in DA, this only works when an e-mail is sent to the actual pop3 account, not to any forwards that point to that account.

I'm presuming that the problem is the order in which exim.conf selects how to deliver.

If anyone would be kind enough to figure it out, I'll see if I can rewrite exim.conf to work as you'd like.

Then nothing else should be necessary.

Jeff

 

[harro]

Hi Jeff,

At the moment I personally don't have time to dive into the Exim config file (since I will have to start from the basics) but I will keep your suggestion in mind for that grey rainy day. Perhaps someone with existing experience in that field is willing to give it a test in the meantime..?

Thanks for the feedback!

Harro

 

[nobaloney]

That's the problem, Harro. I'm the gent who wrote the DirectAdmin SpamBlocker exim.conf file, and I don't have the time or enough innate knowledge.

Hopefully someone else does, or has the time to look it up.

Jeff

 

[harro]

I looked at the exim.conf (just gathering information, no solutions yet).

The order could be (part of) the problem. The forwarded mails are 'caught' after the vacation message filter is applied.

This means that either:

a) the aliases should be processed before the vacation message (which would mean a modification to exim.conf). Now the order is:

domain_filter:
uservacation:
userautoreply:
virtual_aliases_nostar:  (what does this mean?  Not a catch-all?)
virtual_user:
virtual_aliases:
 followed by an entry for aliases that redirect to the outside world:

#if we have an alias, but no passwd entry we have to drop the email because the
#first alias is unseen (so that you can forward as well as save it)
#The save part is "seen" (virtual_user), but the forward before it isn't.  This
#will be the spot where we "see" the email so that it doesn't send a bounce if
#we have an alias but no pop.
drop_solo_alias:
  driver = redirect
< ... >
  data = ${if exists{/etc/virtual/$domain/aliases}{${lookup{$local_part}lsearch{/etc/virtual/$domain/aliases}}}}

The order is important:

#                          ORDER DOES MATTER                         #
#   A local address is passed to each in turn until it is accepted.  #

So the big question is... what happens if you move the vacation / autoreply sections to the end? The emails will have been accepted by one of the other 'conditions' and therefore no longer passing to the vacation section. Or is that not totally true (could mail be redirected somehow to the vacation section as well as to the transport section)?


b) when a vacation message is set, the aliases need to be added to the vacation.conf file in order to trigger a response in the condition:

uservacation:
   driver = accept
   condition = ${lookup{$local_part} lsearch {/etc/virtual/${domain}/vacation.conf}{yes}{no}}

At this moment I do not have a 'spare' server to play with the order in the exim.conf (and not risk upsetting some people). Does anyone else have this facility and is interested to figure this (option a) out?

Option b) is mainly getting the if's and then's right (which is no small feat either).

Thanks for listening / reading and feel free to shoot some ideas this way.

Harro

 

[nobaloney]

Problem is once it's accepted it doesn't keep going down the list.

I currently don't have any testbeds available; I'm trying to find the time to build one.

Jeff