Autoreponder in exim_mainlog, even when off

vikins

• June 05, 2014 13:33

Is it normal to see autoresponder references in the exim_mainlog even when the autoresponder in question is off? What I mean is, there is an autoresponder setup for the particular email address, but in the settings for the autoresponder it is off, not active. So, what I think is happening is that exim must go through all the steps of forwarding it to the autoresponder but then it just dies after that unless the autoresponder is actually active? I am only thinking about this because I'm trying to control outgoing mail, and autoresponders create really bad backscatter when spam is sent to them. So, I parsed the exim logs to see just how much was being created by doing this: grep "=> .*@.*@.*" /var/log/exim_mainlog | awk '{print $6,$5}' | sort | uniq -c | sort -n | grep autorespond I was surprised to see hundreds of what seemed like outgoing autoresponder emails. When I looked closer I found that most of autoresponders were not even active but yet entries were being created in the exim log. I am just looking for some confirmation that my thinking is correct and wondering how I can get a real count of the outgoing email from active only autoresponders? Thanks!

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  cPanelMichael

  • June 06, 2014 13:22

  Hello :) Yes, it's normal to see that output in /var/log/exim_mainlog when the autoresponder is not active. EX: 2014-06-06 09:18:12 1Wsu28-0004dL-DA => |/usr/local/cpanel/bin/autorespond test2@example.com /home/example/.autorespond (test2@example.com) R=virtual_aliases_nostar T=jailed_virtual_address_pipe
  The "/usr/local/cpanel/bin/autorespond" script needs to be utilized in order make the determination if the auto responder is active or not. It should not result in any backscatter because the auto response is only sent when it's active. Thank you.

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  vikins

  • June 06, 2014 14:24

  Okay, so my thinking (which took me a while to figure out) was correct. Is there any way to determine the actual amount of autoresponses being generated?

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  cPanelMichael

  • June 06, 2014 15:40

  You could go through /var/log/exim_mainlog and see what deliveries were made after emails sent to addresses with autoresponders configured, but there are no direct statistics available for that in cPanel/WHM. Thank you.

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  vikins

  • June 06, 2014 17:55

  Any command line magic that would make that not a massive undertaking? :)

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