[Greylist-users] GroupWise is the Devil

[Scott Nelson]

At 03:10 PM 7/3/03 -0500, Marius Strom wrote:
>
>> Thanks, I'll do that.  I'll keep you guys anonymous, in case that is
>> why you aren't posting to the list directly.
>
>I've gone ahead and subscribed, so I'll start taking some of this to the
>list in the future..  See below for more testing:
>
>> > A tcpdump shows that GroupWise does say QUIT after it sees the 451 error.
>> >
>> > However, the bounce message the user gets indicates:
>> >
>> > The attached file had the following undeliverable recipient(s):
>> > 	destination at host.com
>> >
>> > Transcript of session follows:
>> > 	Command:  DATA
>> > 	Response: 551 No valid recipients
>> >
>> >
>> > So, in effect, GW seems to be lying outright about what it's doing.
>> 
>> That is really weird.  I'm glad you were able to verify this, since I don't
>> have direct access to a network with a groupwise server.  But I did get a
>> one of those bounces forwarded to me from a user on a groupwise server, and
>> it looks exactly the same as yours.
>> 
>> I filed a bugreport at support.novell.com.  Let's see how quick they are to
>> respond.  Too bad my email address will bounce them if they use Groupwise.
>> <grin>
>> 
>> Can you change the response code in your milter to return 450 or 452 instead
>> of 451, and see if that results in any different behavior?  I can't believe
>> they have this big of a gaping bug for all 4xx codes.  I'll probably wait on
>> sending this info to the users list until behavior with the other error
>> codes is confirmed.
>
>Tried with 450, 452, and 421, all exhibit the same behavior as 451.
>
>> > You can see tcpdumps, bounce messages, and more here:
>> >       http://www.nostrum.com/~pckizer/greylist/
>> > 		(cis-gw.tamu.edu is a groupwise box, all other boxes are sendmail
>> > 		running greylisting)
>> >
>> > > Make sure that this isn't the problem that I described in the greylisting
>> > > docs under "Implementation Caveats".  I'm guessing that groupwise is the
>> > > cause of this, though I don't know for sure.
>
>I also tried tweaking the Milter failure to occur after the DATA section
>instead of after RCPT.   GW does properly queue and resend the message
>at this point.  Grrrr.
>

Ok, I think I understand the problem and see a reasonable solution.

The "bug" is that Groupware continues on to the DATA stage,
even after failing in the RCPT TO stage.
Note that even if this bug is fixed, there will still be a lot
of broken mailers for a long time.
(I'll bet it also doesn't properly handle things correctly when
one of three RCPTs fail, but that's hardly a greylisting problem)

The solution is to fail the DATA with a 4xx /as well/ if there
was at least one RCPT that was 4xx.

Scott Nelson <scott at spamwolf.com>