Backup Central

* Dave Ewart <Dave.Ewart < at > cancer.org.uk> [2004-06-02 08:32]:

I have sent him a (reasonably) polite, but "to-the-point" message
about this, asking him to reconfigure his (broken) auto-reply
software.

I've adjusted my procmail script to handle these messages. If anyone
is running procmail, here's my script so far (it also detects list
messages and files them accordingly):

SPC="[ ]"

FROM_="(From${SPC}|(Old-|X-)?(Resent-)?\
(From|Reply-To|Sender)(.*\<)?"

SENDER_ML=(owner-(\
amanda-users < at > amanda\.org\
|cryptography < at > metzdowd\.com\
|cypherpunks < at > [a-z0-9.-]*(lne|ssz).com\
|mixminion-dev < at > freehaven\.net))

OOO_TWITS=(\
whargrove < at > dsc\.net\
|jharpole < at > us\.ibm\.com\
|j.koenig < at > benntec\.de\
|manbary < at > vizrt\.com)

# Sender is owner mailing lists
#
:0
*$ ^Sender:.*$SENDER_ML
* ^Sender:.*owner-\/[a-z0-9.-]+ < at >
* MATCH ?? ()\/[^ < at > ]+
{
LISTNAME=$MATCH

:0 :
*$ ^${FROM_}.*$OOO_TWITS
* B ?? out.of.the.office
/in/trash

:0 E:
mailing_lists/${LISTNAME}
}

The weakness in this script is that it allows everyone to screw up
once, at which point you manually add their address to the OOO_TWITS
variable. I may decide to write it more intelligently using scoring,
but this is pretty effective since these people tend to be repeat
offenders. The whargrove fella had a really stupid responder that
would repeatedly respond to the same address, so the script was quite
useful.

On the next out of office reply I get, I will modify this script to
autoreply to the sender with an etiquette lecture.

Believe it or not, I received an out of office to the post I'm
replying to So as I indicated, I wrote an autoresponder to deal
with this crap. But first, I must apologize in advance, in case this
thing backfires in an infinate loop and replies to the list. Here is
the latest script:

PRC_LIBRARY_DIR=$HOME/procmail

SENDER_ML=(owner-(\
amanda-users < at > amanda\.org\
|cryptography < at > metzdowd\.com\
|cypherpunks < at > [a-z0-9.-]*(lne|ssz).com\
|mixminion-dev < at > freehaven\.net))

# Sender is owner mailing lists
#
:0
*$ ^Sender:.*$SENDER_ML
* ^Sender:.*owner-\/[a-z0-9.-]+ < at >
* MATCH ?? ()\/[^ < at > ]+
{
LISTNAME=$MATCH

LOG="+_+_+_+[ Anti-OOO ]+_+_+_+$EOL"
INCLUDERC=$PRC_LIBRARY_DIR/ooo_responder.prc

:0 E:
mailing_lists/${LISTNAME}
}

[ooo_responder.prc file]

# Anti-Out-of-Office Autoresponder
# by Justin Gombos (6/2/04)
#

SPC="[ ]"

FROM_="(From${SPC}|(Old-|X-)?(Resent-)?\
(From|Reply-To|Sender)(.*\<)?"

MYSELF=mindfuq < at > zianet.com

TEMPDIR=$HOME/tmp
MAILDIR=$HOME/Mail

ORIG_MSG ="$TEMPDIR/preserved_orginal.msg"
OOO_NOTICE ="$PRC_LIBRARY_DIR/anti_ooo.msg"
AUTORESP_OUTBOX ="$MAILDIR/sent-mail/autoresp"
OOO_SENDERS ="$MAILDIR/ooo_twits.cache"

:0 c: captureorigmsg.lock
* -100^0
*$ 30^0 ^${FROM_}.*$OOO_TWITS
* 50^0 HB ?? out.of.the.office
* 30^0 B ?? (will return|until|back on)
*$ 0^0 ^TO_.*\/$MYSELF
*$ 30^0 !^X-Loop: $MATCH
#* 70^0 !^FROM_DAEMON
| (echo "---Original Message---"; \
formail -X "From:" \
-X "To:" \
-X "Subject:"; \
echo) > $ORIG_MSG

OOO_SCORE=$=

:0 c: captureorig.lock
*$ $OOO_SCORE^0
| sed -e 's/^/> /' >> $ORIG_MSG

:0 Whc: oooresp.lock
*$ $OOO_SCORE^0
| formail -rD 8192 $OOO_SENDERS

:0 Ahc # Change A to e for single replies
| (formail -rtI"Precedence: junk" \
-A"X-Loop: $MATCH" \
-I"From: $MATCH" ; \
cat $OOO_NOTICE ; \
echo; \
cat $ORIG_MSG ; rm $ORIG_MSG \
) | tee $AUTORESP_OUTBOX | $SENDMAIL -oi -t -f $MATCH

:0 A:
/in/ooo_list_replies

OOO_SCORE=-1

[anti_ooo.msg file]

My scripts have detected that you posted an out of office reply to a
public forum. Please control your auto-responder.

If you are receiving this in error, I apologize; please disregard it.

On Thu, 3 Jun 2004, Justin Gombos wrote:

[anti_ooo.msg file]

My scripts have detected that you posted an out of office reply to a
public forum. Please control your auto-responder.

If you are receiving this in error, I apologize; please disregard it.

At the risk of prolonging this thread even further, it does seem
incongruous for an auto-responder script aimed as mis-behaving
auto-responders to request that if it itself mis-behaves, the
recipient should please disregard.

-Mitch

* Mitch Collinsworth <mitch < at > ccmr.cornell.edu> [2004-06-03 08:32]:

At the risk of prolonging this thread even further, it does seem
incongruous for an auto-responder script aimed as mis-behaving
auto-responders to request that if it itself mis-behaves, the
recipient should please disregard.

I thought someone would get a kick out of that.. I was cracking up as
I wrote it.

Now hopefully it doesn't misbehave too much. It already backfired
once. When I posted the script to the list, it was echoed back to me
(as all list messages are), and the script was triggered by itself
because it contained all the key phrases it was looking for. So my
autoresponder sent an etiquette lecture to myself Fortunately the
infinite loop protection code worked (though it won't work in all
cases).