Mitigating autorespond loops by implementing RFC 3834

[email2trac@…]

My email2trac and trac are configured to notify the reporter for ticket creation and updates. Occasionally an automated system sends an email, causing it to receive an automated reply, causing it to send its own automated reply, essentially creating a loop. Stopping this requires manual intervention by adding the offending address to notify_reporter_black_list

This could be partly reduced by following some of the RFC 3834 recommendations. Specifically not sending an autorespond in case the Auto-Submitted header is present (unless it is set to no) or the Precedence header is present and set to list, junk or bulk. Trac already sets these headers on outgoing mails.

This however will not stop mail loops with remote mailers that both do not set nor check these headers.

[bas]

That is a good suggestion. I have to read RFC 3834. Do you know which header I have to check or can you write a patch for it?

[email2trac@…]

I am not a programmer and do not have a test setup, so unfortunately cannot write the patch myself. The relevant headers are: Auto-Submitted with any value other than no Precedence with a value of list junk or bulk

[bas]

I will try to come with a solution

[bas]

I just implemented this feature. You can disable the automatic response check with:

disable_automatic_response_check: True

I only check the the header: Auto-Submitted as Precedence is not valid anymore. For the source see:

• ​https://gitlab.com/surfsara/email2trac/commits/master

[bas]

I have chaanged the behaviour default is off and you can turned it on:

• enable_automatic_response_check: True