[LINK] Conditions under which mail to link gets delayed

[Tony Barry]

At 9:04 AM +1000 13/11/01, Irene Graham wrote:
>[Apols if anyone receives this twice. Sent to link yesterday but apparently
>didn't arrive on the list.]

It's some years since I explained this phenomenon (or one of them anyway).

The majordomo software which runs link checks messages to see if they 
might be list commands sent mistakenly to the list and not to 
majordomo@www.anu.edu.au .

It looks for words like "help" and "subscribe" near the front of the 
message. It's a bit overenthusiastic sometimes. If it finds a match 
on such words it adds  information to the message giving the reason 
for rejecting  it and sends it on to me to decide what to do with it.

If it's a valid message I reconstruct the original message and resend 
it adding a command to tell majordomo to let it through (as the 
triggering word will be still there). I also change the "From" field 
to the original sender's address instead of mine so that I won't get 
responses to the message.

If I'm not checking my email, which I wasn't for 23 hours yesterday 
as I was away, there will be a delay before I see the message and 
approve it.

Tony
-- 
phone  +61 2 6241 7659
mailto:me@Tony-Barry.emu.id.au
http://tony-barry.emu.id.au/people/tony/index.html