396787 - [e-mail]: invalid recipient

Status: RESOLVED WORKSFORME

(mozilla.org Graveyard :: Server Operations, task)

Description

[Nelson Bolyard (seldom reads bugmail)]

I'm the moderator of [e-mail]
I've received numerous emails in the last 24 hours from subscribers, 
complaining that their attempts to send emails to that list 
result in bounce messages that report that that address cannot be
reached or is an invalid recipient.  

One of the complaints included the actual text of the bounce, and
I noticed that it had a trailing dot in the email address, e.g. 
'[e-mail].'  (note the dot after org)
But I doubt that all the subscribers who had troubles were doing that
unless there is some email software that routinely adds such trailing dots.

Comment 1

[Dave Miller [:justdave]]

Can you attach said bounce or mail it to me directly?

Comment 2

[Nelson Bolyard (seldom reads bugmail)]

None of my correspondents forwarded complete copies of the bounce messages.
One reported:
"I already tried to send this to '[e-mail]' but
 I got a cannot be reached error.

Another reported receiving the following bounce message, which he copied
and pasted (without headers):

> Your message did not reach some or all of the intended recipients.
> 
>       Subject:	About Firefox security.
>       Sent:	9/18/2007 10:23 PM
> 
> The following recipient(s) cannot be reached:
> 
>       '[e-mail].' on 9/18/2007 10:23 PM
>             Invalid recipient

Comment 3

[Dave Miller [:justdave]]

I've searched the logs for 24 hours either side of that timestamp (since he didn't provide a timezone), and can't find a record of any bounces.  I feel pretty safe saying at this point that the bounce didn't come from us, but probably his local provider.  The hypothesis you presented on IRC that a server somewhere was confused by the extra period at the end is quite possibly the case.  It's quite possible that the email address is given in another email or on a site that automatically generates the mailto links, and the automatic link generation is erroneously including the period after it if it was used in a sentence.

If this is still happening to anyone and you can get me full headers from the bounce message feel free to reopen this.