Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!att!rutgers!elbereth.rutgers.edu!hardees.rutgers.edu!patterso From: patterso@hardees.rutgers.edu (Ross Patterson) Newsgroups: comp.protocols.tcp-ip Subject: re: Batch Processing -- via SMTP.... Message-ID:Date: 26 Sep 88 02:04:43 GMT References: <8809250137.AA00317@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU> Organization: Rutgers Univ., New Brunswick, N.J. Lines: 19 Craig, The experience of the BITNET "LISTSERV" mail manager bears out your observations from the Info server. Many's the time we've wished for an explicitly defined address to direct errors towards, rather than relying on the mail system's implementors to grasp the vagueries of RFC822's From: and Sender:; RFC821's MAIL FROM:, and the interaction between them all. We've even found some mailers that use Reply-to: as an error target! LISTSERV has the unenviable status of both a mail originator (for the discussion groups it manages), and a batch processor (for the various commands it accepts (subscription requests, file retrievals, database search, etc.), causing it even further grief. One mail-based batch processor I'm aware of, which provides access to an otherwise online computer conference, explicity codes a "Reply-to: Garbage@Garbage (Don't REPLY to this message)" to avoid the problem. Ross Patterson Rutgers University