455845 - Emails have no header to indicate that they are auto-generated, and so get auto-responses

Status: RESOLVED FIXED

(Bugzilla :: Email Notifications, defect, P4)

Description

[Ralf Hildebrandt]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; Konqueror/3.5; en_US) KHTML/3.5.10 (like Gecko)
Build Identifier: 

BugZilla sends out autogenerated mails, e.g. when somebody subscribes to a bug.

Problem: These mails have headers to make them look like a real mail (From: and To: headers), but have no (standardized!) headers to indicate that they were autogenerated!

This leads to the problem that these mails are AUTOREPLIED TO by e.g. *BSD vacation.

An recent example from the bugzilla used at kde.org:

Return-Path: <sender@domain>
...
From: Sender <sender@domain>
Sender: [e-mail]
To: [e-mail]
Subject: [Bug 112213] XMPP Jabber TLS support
X-Bugzilla-URL: http://bugs.kde.org/
X-Bugzilla-Reason: Voter
X-Bugzilla-Type: newchanged
X-Bugzilla-Watch-Reason: None
X-Bugzilla-Product: kopete
X-Bugzilla-Component: Jabber Plugin
X-Bugzilla-Keywords:
X-Bugzilla-Severity: wishlist
X-Bugzilla-Who: sender@domain
X-Bugzilla-Status: NEW
X-Bugzilla-Priority: NOR
X-Bugzilla-Assigned-To: [e-mail]
X-Bugzilla-Target-Milestone: ---
X-Bugzilla-Changed-Fields: CC
In-Reply-To: <[e-mail]/>
References: <[e-mail]/>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="UTF-8"
MIME-Version: 1.0
Message-Id: <[e-mail]>
Date: Thu, 18 Sep 2008 00:21:29 +0200 (CEST)

As you can see, there is no
Precedence: bulk
header, which would cause any sensible vacation program NOT to answer!


Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1.
2.
3.

Comment 1

[Ralf Hildebrandt]

And of cours the To: header bears my address, so vacation is inclined to answer.

That whole mail looks JUST LIKE a REAL mail from sender@domain to [e-mail]!

Comment 2

[Frédéric Buclin]

(In reply to comment #0)
> As you can see, there is no
> Precedence: bulk
> header, which would cause any sensible vacation program NOT to answer!


Per RFC 2076 section 3.9, the usage of 'Precendence:' is "Non-standard, controversial, discouraged". Not sure that's a good idea to implement it.

Comment 3

[Ralf Hildebrandt]

rfc3834 says in Section "2.  When (not) to send automatic responses":

Automatic responses SHOULD NOT be issued in response to any
message which contains an Auto-Submitted header field (see below),
where that field has any value other than "no".

So that header seeems a safe choice. OTOH, Section 3.1.8. "Precedence field" says:

A response MAY include a Precedence field [I4.RFC2076] in order to
   discourage responses from some kinds of responders which predate this
   specification.  The field-body of the Precedence field MAY consist of
   the text "junk", "list", "bulk", or other text deemed appropriate by
   the responder.  Because the Precedence field is non-standard and its
   interpretation varies widely, the use of Precedence is not
   specifically recommended by this specification, nor does this
   specification recommend any particular value for that field.

In order to cover all bases, the Precedence: header should probably also be used, just to be on the safe side.

But I'm sure Outlook/Exchange will ignore ALL of this and send responses anyway. :(

Comment 4

[Ralf Hildebrandt]

Attachment: Proposed patch

It just adds the "Auto-Submitted: auto-generated" header at the appropriate place.

Comment 5

[Frédéric Buclin]

Comment on attachment 339488 [details] [diff] [review]
Proposed patch

>+Auto-Submitted: auto-generated

This header seems correct per RFC 3834 section 5, but you only fixed some emails, not all of them. Why?

When you update your patch, don't forget to request review from e.g. 'mkanat' (by setting the review flag to "?" and typing "mkanat" (without quotes) in the requestee field).

Comment 6

[Ralf Hildebrandt]

Why? Because I expected the templates to be collected in one single directory for easier manipulation :)

I'll do an update...

Comment 7

[Ralf Hildebrandt]

Attachment: Proposed patch which covers all mail templates

This time I searched for all files matching
^Subject:
and added an "Auto-Submitted: auto-generated" header.

Comment 8

[Max Kanat-Alexander]

Comment on attachment 339498 [details] [diff] [review]
Proposed patch which covers all mail templates

Fix Bugzilla::Mailer instead.

Comment 9

[Ralf Hildebrandt]

Attachment: Proposed patch which fixes Bugzilla::Mailer

The proposed patch fixes Bugzilla::Mailer by inserting an:
Auto-Submitted: auto-generated
after all other headers.

Comment 10

[Max Kanat-Alexander]

Comment on attachment 339565 [details] [diff] [review]
Proposed patch which fixes Bugzilla::Mailer

Add the header in the same place we add the X-Bugzilla-URL header.

Comment 11

[Ralf Hildebrandt]

Attachment: Proposed patch which fixes Bugzilla::Mailer

The header is now added in the same place where the
X-Bugzilla-URL header is added.

Comment 12

[Frédéric Buclin]

I had to apply the patch manually to the 3.2 branch as it didn't apply cleanly due to bug 455430 which landed on trunk only.

tip:

Checking in Bugzilla/Mailer.pm;
/cvsroot/mozilla/webtools/bugzilla/Bugzilla/Mailer.pm,v  <--  Mailer.pm
new revision: 1.23; previous revision: 1.22
done

3.2rc1:

Checking in Bugzilla/Mailer.pm;
/cvsroot/mozilla/webtools/bugzilla/Bugzilla/Mailer.pm,v  <--  Mailer.pm
new revision: 1.20.2.2; previous revision: 1.20.2.1
done