dovecot - Apr 2016 - sieve vacation: write to the .lda-dupes database without generating a vacation response.

I'm using Dovecot's sieve extensions quite happily, they are very good!
Thanks for all who worked on them.  I have a question that maybe is
appropriate for a sieve-specific discussion list, so if there is one I
should post to instead, please let me know:


I've poked through the sieve vacation RFC and all the documentation I
can find and I cannot figure out how to do this.  It's more-or-less not
the intent of sieve's vacation, so perhaps it's more of a "you
can't get
there from here" situation, but maybe folks here have an idea:

I am (ab)?using sieve vacation to send an automated response at all
times to all senders who put me in the To line, every 90 days, which
explains my lack of responsiveness and to explain who else might be
better contact. (I have hundreds of emails sent to me to which I will
never have time to respond, and probably should have been routed to
someone else at my organization anyway.)

However, I *don't* want my regular correspondents to receive this
autoreply.  I'd thus like to seed the database with known individuals
I'm corresponding with to pretend they've already received the
autoresponder.

Since I bcc an archive address on all emails, my original thought was to
detect people in the To and Cc line of outgoing emails and record them
in the .lda-dupes database, as they received a vacation email.  I can't
figure out how to do this; there is no option on the sieve vacation
directive that I can find to do something like this (i.e., I'm looking
for a a "do the usual, but *don't* actually send the the email"
option
on the sieve vacation directive).

I do have various other solutions that help in this regard, for example,
I never send a vacation email to messages that match:
     header :contains "In-Reply-To"  "@example.org"
(where example.org is my domain).

This helps, but obviously doesn't handle the situation where the
correspondent doesn't reply to one of my emails, or had a stupid MUA.

Furthermore, I'd like to implement as many methods as possible for my
regular corespondents to limit their receipt of the autoresponder.

Any ideas?

Thanks in advance for any help or advice you can give!
-- 
   -- bkuhn
=======================================================================Become a
Conservancy Supporter today: https://sfconservancy.org/supporter

On 19-04-16 20:01, Bradley M. Kuhn wrote:
> I'm using Dovecot's sieve extensions quite happily, they are very
good!
> Thanks for all who worked on them.  I have a question that maybe is
> appropriate for a sieve-specific discussion list, so if there is one I
> should post to instead, please let me know:
> 
> 
> I've poked through the sieve vacation RFC and all the documentation I
> can find and I cannot figure out how to do this.  It's more-or-less not
> the intent of sieve's vacation, so perhaps it's more of a "you
can't get
> there from here" situation, but maybe folks here have an idea:
> 
> I am (ab)?using sieve vacation to send an automated response at all
> times to all senders who put me in the To line, every 90 days, which
> explains my lack of responsiveness and to explain who else might be
> better contact. (I have hundreds of emails sent to me to which I will
> never have time to respond, and probably should have been routed to
> someone else at my organization anyway.)
> 
> However, I *don't* want my regular correspondents to receive this
> autoreply.  I'd thus like to seed the database with known individuals
> I'm corresponding with to pretend they've already received the
> autoresponder.
> 
You shouldn't try to force feed the dupes files, that's a hack: the
dupes files has no public api so you probably shouldnt be messing with
it directly.
A proper solution would be to include a list of excluded addresses in
the sieve script, and exempt those from the autoresponder, maybe
something like this:

require "envelope";
require "variables";

set :lower "whitelist" "first at example,com second at
example.com";

if envelope :matches "from" "*" {
  set :lower "sender" "${0}";
  if string :matches "${sender}" "${whitelist}" {
    # do nothing, sender is on whitelist
  } else{
    # do regular autoresponder stuff
  }
}

The whitelist variable could be auto generated and updated from your
address book or archive box parser.

I have no idea if this actually scales. You could also implement the
whitelist variable using extdata
(http://wiki2.dovecot.org/Pigeonhole/Sieve/Plugins/Extdata), or
outsource the complete whitelist check to an external program (a trivial
script in a real programming language) using extprograms's
"execute"
(http://wiki2.dovecot.org/Pigeonhole/Sieve/Plugins/Extprograms).

Good luck!

Kind regards,
	Tom

-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: signature.asc
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 819 bytes
Desc: OpenPGP digital signature
URL:
<http://dovecot.org/pipermail/dovecot/attachments/20160419/ec579816/attachment-0001.sig>

Am 19.04.2016 um 20:55 schrieb Tom Hendrikx:
> On 19-04-16 20:01, Bradley M. Kuhn wrote:
>> I'm using Dovecot's sieve extensions quite happily, they are
very good!
>> Thanks for all who worked on them.  I have a question that maybe is
>> appropriate for a sieve-specific discussion list, so if there is one I
>> should post to instead, please let me know:
>>
>>
>> I've poked through the sieve vacation RFC and all the documentation
I
>> can find and I cannot figure out how to do this.  It's more-or-less
not
>> the intent of sieve's vacation, so perhaps it's more of a
"you can't get
>> there from here" situation, but maybe folks here have an idea:
>>
>> I am (ab)?using sieve vacation to send an automated response at all
>> times to all senders who put me in the To line, every 90 days, which
>> explains my lack of responsiveness and to explain who else might be
>> better contact. (I have hundreds of emails sent to me to which I will
>> never have time to respond, and probably should have been routed to
>> someone else at my organization anyway.)
>>
>> However, I *don't* want my regular correspondents to receive this
>> autoreply.  I'd thus like to seed the database with known
individuals
>> I'm corresponding with to pretend they've already received the
>> autoresponder.
>>
> 
> You shouldn't try to force feed the dupes files, that's a hack: the
> dupes files has no public api so you probably shouldnt be messing with
> it directly.
> A proper solution would be to include a list of excluded addresses in
> the sieve script, and exempt those from the autoresponder, maybe
> something like this:
> 
> require "envelope";
> require "variables";
> 
> set :lower "whitelist" "first at example,com second at
example.com";
> 
> if envelope :matches "from" "*" {
>   set :lower "sender" "${0}";
>   if string :matches "${sender}" "${whitelist}" {
>     # do nothing, sender is on whitelist
>   } else{
>     # do regular autoresponder stuff
>   }
> }
> 
> The whitelist variable could be auto generated and updated from your
> address book or archive box parser.
> 
> I have no idea if this actually scales. You could also implement the
> whitelist variable using extdata
> (http://wiki2.dovecot.org/Pigeonhole/Sieve/Plugins/Extdata), or
> outsource the complete whitelist check to an external program (a trivial
> script in a real programming language) using extprograms's
"execute"
> (http://wiki2.dovecot.org/Pigeonhole/Sieve/Plugins/Extprograms).
> 
> Good luck!
> 
> Kind regards,
> 	Tom
> 
at sometime in the future

https://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-ietf-sieve-external-lists-10

may solve such cases


Best Regards
MfG Robert Schetterer

-- 
[*] sys4 AG

http://sys4.de, +49 (89) 30 90 46 64
Franziskanerstra?e 15, 81669 M?nchen

Sitz der Gesellschaft: M?nchen, Amtsgericht M?nchen: HRB 199263
Vorstand: Patrick Ben Koetter, Marc Schiffbauer
Aufsichtsratsvorsitzender: Florian Kirstein

Op 4/19/2016 om 8:01 PM schreef Bradley M. Kuhn:
> I'm using Dovecot's sieve extensions quite happily, they are very
good!
> Thanks for all who worked on them.  I have a question that maybe is
> appropriate for a sieve-specific discussion list, so if there is one I
> should post to instead, please let me know:
>
>
> I've poked through the sieve vacation RFC and all the documentation I
> can find and I cannot figure out how to do this.  It's more-or-less not
> the intent of sieve's vacation, so perhaps it's more of a "you
can't get
> there from here" situation, but maybe folks here have an idea:
>
> I am (ab)?using sieve vacation to send an automated response at all
> times to all senders who put me in the To line, every 90 days, which
> explains my lack of responsiveness and to explain who else might be
> better contact. (I have hundreds of emails sent to me to which I will
> never have time to respond, and probably should have been routed to
> someone else at my organization anyway.)
>
> However, I *don't* want my regular correspondents to receive this
> autoreply.  I'd thus like to seed the database with known individuals
> I'm corresponding with to pretend they've already received the
> autoresponder.
>
> Since I bcc an archive address on all emails, my original thought was to
> detect people in the To and Cc line of outgoing emails and record them
> in the .lda-dupes database, as they received a vacation email.  I can't
> figure out how to do this; there is no option on the sieve vacation
> directive that I can find to do something like this (i.e., I'm looking
> for a a "do the usual, but *don't* actually send the the
email" option
> on the sieve vacation directive).
>
> I do have various other solutions that help in this regard, for example,
> I never send a vacation email to messages that match:
>      header :contains "In-Reply-To"  "@example.org"
> (where example.org is my domain).
>
> This helps, but obviously doesn't handle the situation where the
> correspondent doesn't reply to one of my emails, or had a stupid MUA.
>
> Furthermore, I'd like to implement as many methods as possible for my
> regular corespondents to limit their receipt of the autoresponder.
You could use the "duplicate" extension:
https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc7352

I haven't thought this through much, but on first glance it should -
together with your Bcc archiving - be flexible enough allow you remember
responding to certain individuals.

Just read the RFC and play with the "duplicate" test a bit and get
back
here if you have any questions.

Regards,

Stephan.