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The recent flurry of postings has left my inbox groaning with dozens of error messages of the "too many hops" variety. My earlier posting explaining this problem is reproduced below. Some RDG members did indeed contact their system administrators. Most, it seems, did not, and the problem continues. These members are not getting any postings (except perhaps ones from me). I cannot simply delete the error messages because there are other kinds of errors mixed in there which may require my attention. I have to review them all and it is not feasible to continue in this way.

The McGill technical people take the view that the problem lies with the settings on other servers, while at least one other system administrator has suggested the problem lies with the system at McGill. Either way, the McGill people are not going to put things back the way they used to be.

The only solution I can see is that I am forced to unsubscribe those users whose servers are still generating these messages. As I have said, you are not getting the postings anyway. If you get an email saying that you have been unsubscribed, you are in this category. Of course you are free to resubscribe, but there is not much point unless you first raise the hops issue with your system administrator.

Lionel

==extract from posting of 16 May 2005===

Postings (other than from me) are generating about 20 error messages, saying that the message cannot be delivered because it has been forwarded too many times which could indicate a mail loop. Examples:

There was a posting by Charles Mitchell on 13 May, about the recent decision Campden Hill Ltd v Chakrani [2005] EWHC 911; another three postings today, 16 May, by Robert Stevens-Monica Chowdry-Robert Stevens, discussing Deutsche Morgan Grenfell v IRC. If you did not get these, then you are probably not getting *any* postings, except perhaps the ones that come from me.

Mail servers send that error (and reject the incoming message) when they receive a message that has been forwarded more than a set number of times. Every mail host seems to generate a number of such "hops" internally, quite apart from the hops arising on the transfer of the message from one place to another. I started getting "could be a mail loop" errors last year, but they have suddenly gone off the scale. New virus and spam filtering at McGill seems to have added five hops at the McGill end and this is making too many total hops for many servers. Messages which I send are much less affected, presumably because they start from a McGill server and so have fewer hops against them when they get to the McGill listserv server.

The McGill technical support people seem to think that the error-generating servers need to have their settings adjusted since what is a "normal" number of hops has risen over the years as spam filtering efforts have been increased. I have forwarded dozens of the error messages to Frank Pettinicchio who, I understand, thinks that the problem is particularly common with a particular kind of server software platform which has a too-low default number of hops. I understand that he has written to system administrators asking them to raise the permissible number of hops, and this seems to have reduced the number of errors.

I can live with getting multiple error messages any time someone makes a posting, just as anyone who posts to the list is likely to get lots of messages along the lines that someone is away from the office for a few days. All I have to do is delete them. But I am starting to feel more and more as if the point of the RDG is undermined by this problem. If postings are not received by 5-10% of the subscribers, and those people have no way of knowing it, it seems to me we have a problem. There is very little that I, or the McGill techs, can do about this.

For now I propose the following. If you did NOT get the messages from Charles and Robert, and you want to get RDG postings, please find out who is your system administrator and explain that you are not getting legitimate mail which is addressed to you because the maximum hop count is set too low. Perhaps you can just forward this message to the appropriate person. I am also going to forward the error message generated by one of Robert's postings to each of the people who was affected. Your system administrator might find that helpful in seeing exactly what is going wrong.

Some of the errors seem to be caused by people who have one address subscribed to RDG, and that one is set up to forward to another, because I am getting "too many hops" errors from addresses that are not subscribed to the RDG at all. For example, if you use the address parachutepants@hotmail.com, this means you ...

Meanwhile, if you want to see what postings you have missed, have a look at the archives at McGill or at Cork.

Yours,
Lionel