[Mgs] In case you were wondering

[Mark J Bradakis]

Not everybody has been on this list for decades.  Some of you may be 
wondering about the Dan Hughes reference, and 'out of office' comments.

What happened those many years ago was that a list subscriber set up an 
automatic email response to any incoming mail.  I don't recall exactly 
how he did it, but it wasn't done according to, oh, shall we say best 
accepted practice at the time.  And in those early days of mailman 
software running the lists, there were some things that could have been 
improved.

So Dan sets up this vacation response program and goes on his merry 
way.  He gets a message from the MG list.  His program responds to the 
MG list with his 'out of the office' canned response.  The MG list gets 
his response, and sends it out to the list.  Dan's autoresponder gets a 
copy of his 'out of the office' and responds by sending his canned 
response to the list.  The MG list gets his response, and sends it out 
to the list.  Dan's autoresponder gets a copy of his 'out of the office' 
and responds by sending his canned response to the list.  The MG list 
gets his response, and sends it out to the list.  Dan's autoresponder 
gets a copy of his 'out of the office' and responds by sending his 
canned response to the list.  The MG list gets his response, and sends 
it out to the list.  Dan's autoresponder gets a copy of his 'out of the 
office' and responds by sending his canned response to the list.  The MG 
list gets his response, and sends it out to the list.  Dan's 
autoresponder gets a copy of his 'out of the office' and responds by 
sending his canned response to the list.  The MG list gets his response, 
and sends it out to the list.  Dan's autoresponder gets a copy of his 
'out of the office' and responds by sending his canned response to the 
list...

You get the idea.  Basically this infinite loop put many thousands of 
email messages in the queue in a short time, really clogging things up 
and of course annoying 100% of the list members.  And it took some time 
on my part to step in, stop the loop and clean up the mess.  Just 
another day in the leisurely life of an overpaid and underworked sys admin.

mjb.