Mail Issue and Question

[Ben Browning]

Richard Wilson wrote:
> We discovered the hard way that
> a recent Java Mail applet that's become very popular with Web developers
> doesn't use the built in mail applications that *should* be running on
> the web servers but tries to manage the SMTP "conversation" directly.
> While this is good from the perspective of Web Server system load, the
> applet doesn't handle timeouts from the mail relays gracefully -- it
> instead throws the mail away.  The applet has no retry mechanism, no
> queuing and furthermore latches on to the first IP address it gets when
> it starts and resolves the DNS alias.  Thus the DNS round robin does not
> come into play at all.

This is not good in any way shape or form. Unless this Java "applet" can
act 100% like an MTA (queueing to disk, redelivering, handling 3xx 4xx
5xx series errors, RFC compliance...) it is a broken bit of ugliness.

> Does anyone on this distribution know of any other applications that try
> to handle their own mail in a similar fashion?

No, I certainly don't. Well, let me rephrase- I don't know of anything
that is not spyware or spamware that does this.

~Ben
-- 
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"Confession only helps if you actually feel bad for your actions.
For you, it would just be a really long boast."
	-Tara
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