[rt-users] Out of office loops

[Bruce Campbell]

On Tue, 12 Aug 2003, Sean Perry wrote:

> >>>>>>"SP" == Sean Perry <sean.perry at intransa.com> writes:
> > SP> what about hacking rt-mailgate to drop Out of Office messages?
> > Care to share a fool-proof method of detecting what is an OoO message
> > and what is not?  I'm sure you'd make a lot of friends by doing so.
>
> well the lame way of "does subject begin with 'Out of (the )?Office
> ((auto)?reply)'" would work unless you expect to receive tickets
> reporting problems with the Out of Office system.  Another possibility
> is parsing the message body for the reply template.  Most systems send
> the same message with the dates adjusted.

*snort*.

That will remove a goodly number of loops, but Murphy's Law dictates that
you'll then have a rush on people seeking help with how to set up their
vacation autoresponder... which you'll drop on the floor.

Unfortunately, I've seen too many autoresponders which didn't quote a
decent (parseable) amount of your text, which makes detecting loops a bit
harder.

> Otherwise, perhaps the headers have a field in them the original poster
> can use.  Maybe Out of Office messages come from a different host or
> X-Mailer.  Perhaps he can add a custom header to the messages to make
> them easier to filter.

Maybe, people will use autoresponders that conform to (proposed)
standards.  Maybe, someone on the other end will change their (mailer)
behaviour in order to make your life (at least, your RT instance) simpler.

This is doubtful.  The solution to the problem is checking previous
messages to detect loop-like activities.  You won't be able to stop loops
from starting, but you will be able to stop them from continuing in _most_
cases.

-- 
                             Bruce Campbell                            RIPE
                   Systems/Network Engineer                             NCC
                 www.ripe.net - PGP562C8B1B             Operations/Security

( Who needs an autoresponder anyway?  Managed quite well with a month's
  holiday without one. )