[Users] I need help with my mail client [Was: running cron on UTC]

[Steve Litt]

On Fri, 1 Mar 2013 07:02:54 -0500
Jerry <jerry at seibercom.net> wrote:

> On Fri, 1 Mar 2013 00:34:33 -0800
> Ian Zimmerman articulated:
> 
> > On Fri, 1 Mar 2013 02:57:10 -0500
> > Steve Litt <slitt at troubleshooters.com> wrote:
> > 
> > Steve> Can anyone tell me how to start narrowing down the cause of
> > Steve> this behavior?
> > 
> > You could begin by telling the (ocluc) list admins to _stop munging_
> > the damn Reply-To headers.  That is broken behavior, as nicely
> > explained here (among many other places):
> > 
> > http://www.unicom.com/pw/reply-to-harmful.html
> 
> Interestingly enough, there is also an opposite opinion on the matter:
> <http://marc.merlins.org/netrants/reply-to-useful.html>
> 
> Personally, I believe ALL list replies should go directly to the list
> and not to an individual unless the individual has specifically
> requested such action. However, I am aware that there are those who
> disagree with that philosophy.

Thanks Ian and Jerry,

It's doubtful that the OCLUG's defaulting replies to
"list" (characterized by some as "munging") is the root cause here,
because probably 90% of the mailing lists I'm on default replies to the
list, and this symptom happens only with OCLUG's list.

Whatever it is, it doesn't happen when I use Thunderbird instead of
Claws. Of course it also doesn't happen on Claws on all the rest of the
mailing lists I participate in. The fact that replying from Thunderbird
eliminates the symptom, even if I later look at my IMAP using Claws,
says to me that the root cause isn't in my Dovecot IMAP server.

Paul from the Claws list pointed out that OCLUG emails' List-Post
(oclug at mailman.oclug.org) and Reply-To (oclug at penguin.oclug.org) don't
match. So far, that's the only thing about OCLUG I've found that's
remotely different from everyone else. I have no idea whether this
mismatch was intended, or whether it came about through an accident of
history. I also don't know how hard it would be to get them to match.

Steffen from the Claws list asked whether I configured Claws-Mail to
add List-Post to the recipient list, and whether I've configured any
reply action, that adds another recipient to the message. The answer
to the second question is "no", my OCLUG folder has no properties or
processing, my .procmailrc has no filters that change mail from OCLUG. 

As far as Steffen's second question, I don't know where in Claws'
config options this would be configured, but the following command
indicates to me that it's unlikely:

slitt at mydesk:~/.claws-mail$ grep -irl "list-post" * | grep -v imapcache
tmp/tmpfile.00000055
slitt at mydesk:~/.claws-mail$

Another point of information is that this symptom occurs whether I
"reply to list" or just "reply".

Since I'm happy with both Claws-Mail and OCLUG, I'll "solve" the
problem by trying to remember to delete the CC automatically inserted
by each Claws reply to OCLUG mail. I might also look into installing
OCLUG folder specific processing or properties, or maybe even setting a
procmail filter to change the headers on mail from OCLUG. It would
basically be a short filter invoking an awk command.

However it gets solved, I'll let you all know about it.

Thanks,

SteveT

Steve Litt                *  http://www.troubleshooters.com/
Troubleshooting Training  *  Human Performance