[Dxspider-support] mail forwarding

[Dirk Koopman]

On 16 Apr 2001 21:00:12 -0400, Charlie Carroll wrote:
> I noticed a problem today with forwarding of personal mail.  I had a piece
> of mail on the W1HR node that was addressed to W1GG.  When I did a sh/st for
> W1GG, I found that he was connected to the K1TTT node, but his listed home
> node was K2RVW which was not connected at that time.  So, even though W1GG
> was connected in the Cluster, a piece of personal mail was not forwarding to
> him.  This evening I noticed that the same piece of mail was still on the
> W1HR, but at this time W1GG was not connected.
> I logged into my AK1A node and set the homenode for W1GG to K1TTT.  At this
> point, the personal mail for W1GG forwarded to the K1TTT node.
> >From this, it seems that forwarding of personal mail occurs when the
> specified homenode is connected to the cluster, and not when the addressee
> is connected to the cluster.

This is not normal behaviour. I would expect personal mail to follow its
recipient about. It does here (Yes, I know it's annoying when the
programmer says that, but in this case it is true).

> 
> However, another personal mail forwarding problem is also evident.  Right
> now there is a piece of personal mail on W1HR which is addressed to KE2S.
> When I first noticed this problem earlier today, KE2S was NOT connected.
> His listed homenode, W2JT, WAS connected.  In this case, message forwarding
> does not seem to be related to the homenode.  To confirm this premise, I set
> the homenode for KE2S to a node that was connected to the cluster.  The
> message did not forward.  Even returning his homenode to the original one,
> did not cause the message to forward.
> 

None of this concurs with my experience. 

One known problem is 'personal mail bouncing' and this occurs either
when a homenode is set and the user connects to some other node, but
doesn't read his mail. The mail will go from the homenode to the other
node and then when he logs off - it comes back.

A worse version of this is when a node 'A' has the user as homenode 'B'
and node 'B' as the user as homenode 'A'. The mail then happily forwards
back and forth until the user reads it or else one or other sysop fixes
the homenode.

In anycase, unless this is a problem I can reproduce and fix more or
less right now, I am trying to get 1.47 out as a 'release'. Message
handling does have some known problems (but not, until now, these ones)
and is scheduled for a pull-thru for 1.48.

Dirk G1TLH