[NTLUG:Discuss] what IS the most simple vacation autoresponder?

[Richard Cobbe]

Lo, on Thursday, December 21, Cameron did write:

> * richard at rain.lewisville.tx.us [2000.12.21 00:21]:
> : All I want is a simple.
> : 
> : "I'm unavailabe until XX at which time I will get to your email.  Thank you"
> : 
> : The Sendmail FAQ points to procmail or ftpmail.  I just finished going
> : through the docs for procmail and I don't think that is what I want.
> : 
> : Any suggestions?
> 
> did you see this?:
> 
> http://www.procmail.org/jari/pm-tips-body.html#service_simple_vacation_with_procmail

That's a good reference, but do be very careful with such an automated
system.  There are a number of issues which you need to watch out for:

1) Don't start mail loops.  If you set up a vacation message, and I set up
   a vacation message, and I send you a normal mail, then we'll get our
   mailers telling each other that we're on vacation, ad infinitum.  This
   is bad; it drives up the load on the servers and wastes bandwidth.

2) Don't send vacation notifications to mailing lists, especially if you
   get copies of your own posts.  (See mail loop, above.)

It's a little hard to tell from my copy of vacation's man page, but it
looks like you can tell it not to send more than <n> vacation notifications
to a particular address; this will be helpful in preventing mail loops.
Using procmail to filter out the mailing list messages before you send the
vacation message will help with number 2.

These are probably not the only issues to worry about, either---just a hint
about the kind of things you can expect to pop up.

Richard