Thu Aug 24 14:01:45 PDT 2000 — Update: we are wrapping up the log analysis, and will send out a full list of lost emails to affected customers shortly. Meanwhile, for customers who are more technical, here’s details on the error that caused this.
We have a global procmailrc which controls delivery of email into customer mailboxes. This RC is identical across all servers, but had the ‘HOST’ tag set. We propagated a procmailrc file which contained the hostname for prop.sonic.net over to sub, ultra and buzz, and they began dropping email. This is documented in the procmailrc man page:
PROCMAILRC(5) PROCMAILRC(5)
NAME procmailrc – procmail rcfile
HOST If this is not the hostname of the machine, processing of the current rcfile will immedi- ately cease. If other rcfiles were specified on the command line, processing will continue with the next one. If all rcfiles are exhausted, the program will terminate, but will not generate an error (i.e. to the mailer it will seem that the mail has been deliv- ered).
The host tag is used if multiple machines receive a message, which might be forwarded for example during another procmail delivery, but which some machines are intended to ignore. We have no use for the host tag, and it’s been removed from our configurations. -Dane and Kelsey