#autorespond-2.0.6 Copyright 1998 Eric Huss e-huss@netmeridian.com
Copyright 2000 Matthias Henze matthias@mhcsoftware.de
Copyright 2001 Brad Dameron bdameron@tscnet.com

EH 02/13/98 - First release.
EH 02/14/98 - Fixed file descriptor bug (wouldn't work on BSD/Linux)
MH 07/2000 1.1.0 added message handling
MH 07/2000 1.1.0 added from adrees commandline option
MH 07/2000 1.1.0a changed back to 1.0.0 compatibility
the new commandline options are optional by now
MH 08/2000 1.1.0b if DEFAUTL_FROM is set to $ the addres in the To:
header will be used as From: of the autoreply.
MH 03/2001 1.1.0b switched * to + in DEFAULT_FROM syntax fixed from header
BD 06/12/2001 2.0.0 Removed some of Matthias's additional command lines
and cleaned up some code.
BD 11/24/2001 2.0.1 Removed binary and added a Makefile
Cleaned up README
BD 11/30/2001 2.0.2 Fixed segfault with no command line options
KJ 08/24/2003 2.0.4 From Woody Security team

• Non-maintainer upload by the Security Team
• Fix buffer overflow with EXT and HOST environment variables (CAN-2003-0654)

JK 09/18/2003 2.0.5 fixed invalid exit codes in several places that cause qmail to bounce messages wrongly.
Thanks to Flavio Curti fcu-autoresp@no-way.org for identifying further invalid exit situations.

JKA 24/4/2016 2.0.6 Fixed the message-id's to comply with RFC to prevent from getting catched in spam filters due to .blah in message-id.

Mail is sent to help@my-company.com. An automatically generated response is sent back to the user with an address of "help@my-company.com". You can set the envelope sender to an empty string. However, some programs will parse the message for the "From:" field and send an autoresponse back to it. It is received at your autoresponder, and you now have a mail loop.

This autoresponder also catches some other simple situations such as mail from a mailer-daemon, empty envelope sender, bulk precedence headers, etc.

First thing, if your qmail distribution is not in /var/qmail, then edit autorespond.c and change QMAIL_LOCATION to point to the correct directory. If you do not want to make use of the 2 optional commandline options edit the 2 defines:

DEFAULT_MH -> corresponds to the "flag" optional parameter DEFAULT_FROM -> connesponds to the "arsender" optional parameter

There shouldn't be anything else to configure. Compile:

make make install

Usage is as follows:

autorespond time num message dir [ flag arsender ]

 time - amount of time to consider a message (in seconds)
 num - maximum number of messages to allow within time seconds
 message - the filename of the message to send
 dir - the directory to hold the log of messages

 optional parameters:

 flag - handling of original message:

   0 - append nothing
   1 - append quoted original message without attachments <default>

 arsender - from address in generated message, or:

   + = blank from envelope ! 
   $ = To: address will be used

For example, in your ~alias directory, create a .qmail-help file with the following:

|autorespond 10000 5 help_message help_autorespond 1 &your-email-address@company.com

This will allow up to five messages from the sender within about 3 hours and include the original message as a quote.

|autorespond 10000 10 help_message help_autorespond 0 + &your-email-address@company.com

This will allow up to ten messages from the sender within about 3 hours and will NOT include the original message as a quote and will leave the from field blank.

Create a file in your ~alias directory called help_message. It should say something like this:

From: Support help@company.com Subject: Help Response

This is a response to your help request.

Below is a copy of the message we received.

Make sure that "From:" is the first line of the file. You should probably include the dashes to separate your help message from the user's message. An example is included with this package.

Create a directory called help_autorespond in your ~alias directory. This is where the log of messages goes.

That should be it.

9/18/2003

• If the maximum count has been reached, the autoresponse doesn't get shipped out, but the message is still processed as usual. This is a change from older versions because it didn't make sense before.

24/4/2016

• Joakim Karlsson joakim@roffe.nu Patched message-id's to comply with RFC for message-id's.
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Message-ID
  http://www.rfc-base.org/txt/rfc-2822.txt
  http://www.rfc-base.org/txt/rfc-2392.txt