Re: [Evolution] Problem with the list?

[Patrick O'Callaghan <poc usb ve>]

On Mon, 2011-06-06 at 00:11 -0600, Akhil Laddha wrote:
> On Fri, 2011-06-03 at 14:24 -0430, Patrick O'Callaghan wrote:
> > On Thu, 2011-06-02 at 15:02 +0930, Wayne Sierke wrote:
> > > On Tue, 2011-05-31 at 23:17 -0430, Patrick O'Callaghan wrote:
> > >
> > > > First I went to the admin page at
> > > > https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/options/evolution-list (with the idea of
> > > > checking if I'd turned off delivery and forgotten about it). Since I had
> > > > naturally forgotten my list password, I requested a new copy. Nothing
> > > > happened.
> > >
> > > Just in case you've forgotten, your original password was included in
> > > the "Welcome" message that was sent when you subscribed.
> > > Wayne
> >
> > That was many years ago and is long gone.
> >
> > I eventually got a reply from one of the admins, to the effect that he
> > couldn't find me on the members list. He suggested I resubscribe. I
> > attempted to do so, but the subscription was rejected on the grounds
> > that I was already subscribed!
>
> Your subscription request was rejected because i went ahead and added
> you to the list before you tried to subscribe. Somehow my replies are
> not getting delivered in time. The initial mail where i replied to you,
> delivered to you after 4 days and you thought nobody (admin) cared about
> your email.

OK. I still don't know why my original subscription had disappeared, but
that's life.

> > I reported all this to the admin. He never replied but after a day or
> > two I suddenly started getting list traffic.
>
> I did reply you but mail was bounced with below error
>
> The message that you sent was undeliverable to the following: 
>
> poc usb ve (450 <poc usb ve>: Recipient address rejected: 
> Greylisted for 5 minutes)

As I'm sure you know, greylisting is a common anti-spam measure. See
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greylisting. Our mail server applies it to
every incoming message from sources it hasn't seen before. Legitimate
sources are expected to retry after the timeout (5 minutes) and are
allowed through (where the mail is then examined by SpamAssassin, but
that's not relevant here). This is standard behaviour for MTA's on
seeing a 450 error ("mailbox unavailable"), but spammers don't bother.
We eliminate 80% of incoming spam this way, as do many other sites.
The odd thing is that that this wasn't the first message you sent me,
and the first one did get through after a long delay, so I wouldn't have
expected this one to be greylisted (although greylisting has its own
timeouts). I'll need to check with our server admin. I'll also ask him
to check his logs and the headers of your messages to see if anything
explains the long delivery times.

Thanks for the clarification in any case.

poc