Whose fault? vacation messages bounce to postmaster.

[Kevin P. Fleming]

mark london wrote:

> I am running cyrus/squirrelmail/sendmail.  I have a vacation plugin for 
> squirrelmail and set up vacation autoresponding.  However, if vacation 
> responds to a spam message that has a bogus email address, the bounced 
> message that says that the vacation message can't be delivered to that 
> bogus email address, goes to postmaster at our site, rather than the 
> person who has vacation enabled.  I don't know if this is a feature or a 
> bug, and how to  change it's behavior.  I notice that  thevacation 
> autoresponse messages have a line at the top of message say that cyrus 
> set sender to <>.  Is this possible the reason for this behavior?  Or is 
> it a sendmail feature?  Here's the header of a vacation response 
> message.  Thanks! -   Mark
> 

You've indirectly answered your own question. Automated responses, 
like vacation responses, are always sent using a null sender, to avoid 
message loops.

If the response was sent using the original recipient's address as the 
sender, where would the bounce be sent? If it was sent to the original 
recipient, that would trigger the vacation response again.