675542 - bugzilla mails should use Precedence: bulk

Status: RESOLVED WONTFIX

(Bugzilla :: Email Notifications, defect)

Description

[bjoern]

Attachment: bugzilla-mail-as-bulk.patch

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux i686; rv:6.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/6.0
Build ID: 2011072100

Steps to reproduce:

if the bugzilla email interface is active autoresponders of bugzilla users will post vacation messages into bugzilla. Bugzilla should use Precedence: bulk in the Mail header to try to prevent that.

Attached patch should fix that.

Comment 1

[:glob ✱]

the 'precedence' header is "Non-standard, controversial, discouraged" (RFC 2076).

we would probably be better off setting the return-path header to null:

  Return-Path: <>

RFC 2821: The primary purpose of the Return-path is to designate the address to which messages indicating non-delivery or other mail system failures are to be sent.

auto-responders also deliver their messages to the address specified in return-path; if bugzilla were to set it to null it should disable all auto-responder emails.

Comment 2

[Frédéric Buclin]

Comment on attachment 549702 [details] [diff] [review]
bugzilla-mail-as-bulk.patch

RFC 2076 explicitly states that the Precedence header is "Non-standard, controversial, discouraged.", see section 3.9.

Also, RFC 3834 states that "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."

So I don't think "Precedence" is the right way to go. We already use the "Auto-Submitted: auto-generated" header for all emails for this exact purpose, and email_in.pl ignores all incoming emails with the "Auto-Submitted: auto-replied" header.

Comment 3

[Frédéric Buclin]

WONTFIX per the two RFCs mentioned above which discourage its use.

Comment 4

[bjoern]

this "rfc" 2076 is piece of paper which is not of great relevance imho. Hoestly reading it is like reading a mail howto for dummies.

Google suggests to use the Precedence: bulk header field in http://mail.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=81126 .

Most mailing list software (like mailman, too) by default uses the "Precedence: list" header which is very similar to "Precedence: bulk".

The mentioned "Auto-Submitted: auto-replied" header is not widely used at all. The only header which is widely used and evaluated by auto-responder software is the Precedence-Header.

Comment 5

[Frédéric Buclin]

(In reply to comment #4)
> this "rfc" 2076 is piece of paper which is not of great relevance imho.

It's a RFC. The fact that you don't like it plays no role here.


> Google suggests to use the Precedence: bulk header field in

Google doesn't say to use this header to prevent auto replies. So this page is irrelevant here.


> Most mailing list software (like mailman, too) by default uses the
> "Precedence: list" header which is very similar to "Precedence: bulk".

http://drupal.org/node/165605 mentions emails to be rejected because they contain this header. Same for https://jira.atlassian.com/browse/BAM-889

It looks like this header causes more trouble than it fixes any real problem with Bugzilla. Also, they do not mention to use this header to prevent auto replies.

Comment 6

[Max Kanat-Alexander]

I would be interested in testing a patch that does Return-Path: <> though. I think that could be good--almost nobody wants email to come back to the Bugzilla sender address. (In fact, I can't think of anybody who does, right now.) Although, this will change once we support replying to bugmails, so that's something to think about, too.

Comment 8

[Paul Menzel]

Hi. What is the status here?

1. Where is *Auto-Submitted* documented?
2. Regarding *Precedence*, as Mailman uses it, what does it hurt to also implement that in Bugzilla?
3. Regarding an empty *Return-Path*, is that documented in some RFC?