skymouse
Fri, 17 Feb 06, 3:16 PM
Issue:
Sometimes when a new user registered for the message board, they didn't receive their activation email containing the remaining step for activating their membership. This meant they couldn't post messages or replies on the board. Users were sometimes also reporting that the "resend activation email" facility also didn't send the activation email.
A similar problem probably affected the "send new password" facility and some other emailing-sending facilities.
Cause:
It is possible that this had multiple causes. We identified one cause, which was that when an email was sent by the message board, the Mail Transport Agent was appending a "Reply-To: noboby@localhost.localdomain" header. Since this is not a reachable email address, some email systems may probably have blocked the emails.
Solution:
The exim configuration was changed to include the Apache user as a trusted sender. This enabled the -f flag to work properly, and for the headers to be set correctly with a valid Return Path. As a result, emails are less likely to be inadvertently blocked as spam. There may be other, unrelated, reasons for non-delivery, which will be treated in future as separate issues.
Sometimes when a new user registered for the message board, they didn't receive their activation email containing the remaining step for activating their membership. This meant they couldn't post messages or replies on the board. Users were sometimes also reporting that the "resend activation email" facility also didn't send the activation email.
A similar problem probably affected the "send new password" facility and some other emailing-sending facilities.
Cause:
It is possible that this had multiple causes. We identified one cause, which was that when an email was sent by the message board, the Mail Transport Agent was appending a "Reply-To: noboby@localhost.localdomain" header. Since this is not a reachable email address, some email systems may probably have blocked the emails.
Solution:
The exim configuration was changed to include the Apache user as a trusted sender. This enabled the -f flag to work properly, and for the headers to be set correctly with a valid Return Path. As a result, emails are less likely to be inadvertently blocked as spam. There may be other, unrelated, reasons for non-delivery, which will be treated in future as separate issues.