[Reportbug-maint] Bug#640249: Bug#640249: reportbug ignores e-mail settings

[Sandro Tosi]

Hi Kevin,
I agree, I'm writing a new --envelope-from cli option to allow to
specify the Envelope From header; Francesco, from the new version of
reportbug onward, you'll have to use that option to select the
envelope from (reverting the change in #614880)

Sandro

On Mon, Oct 31, 2011 at 22:48, Kevin Locke <kevin at kevinlocke.name> wrote:
> On 10/31/2011 2:08 PM, Sandro Tosi wrote:
>> I'm considering reverting the change you mentioned, but you have to be
>> more convincing than before.
>
> Sure, that's fair.  For clarity, I would prefer adding an additional
> configuration parameter rather than requiring the envelope sender to be
> either the from address or system default, because I think the submitter
> of bug #614880 has a reasonable use case.  But making that change
> requires supporting arguments as well, so they are provided below.
>
> Note that in the cases below the alternative to setting an envelope
> sender configuration option would be configuring reportbug to use SMTP.
>  I contend that this raises the barrier to entry over using a local MTA
> when one exists because the user must deal with ISP or local outgoing
> port blocking, figuring out appropriate SMTP options (e.g. GMail's
> non-standard configuration requirements), and configuring them for yet
> another program on all systems used.  If you disagree, the scenarios
> below will likely not be persuasive.
>
> The arguments also depend on the extent to which ease/convenience is a
> goal of reportbug.  Feel free to consider them with that in mind.
>
>> On Thu, Sep 22, 2011 at 20:58, Kevin Locke <kevin at kevinlocke.name> wrote:
>>> I contend that it is not reasonable to expect users to have local MTAs
>>> configured to canonicalize/masquerade local user account names to public
>>> addresses
>>
>> could you please elaborate why it's not reasonable?
>
> Sure, here are some use cases that I contend reportbug should support:
>  * Reporting bugs from systems on which the reporting user does not have
> administrative access to configure the MTA or the address mapping for
> their user account.
>  * Users who either lack the knowledge to configure their MTA, prefer
> not to make changes to a working system, or prefer not to spend the time
> required to determine and implement the correct configuration to satisfy
> reportbug.
>
>>> and that there are legitimate cases where users will want to
>>> report bugs with addresses different than whatever their default
>>> envelope sender is.
>>
>> examples?
>
> Here are a few example cases that I would consider reasonable:
>  * Suppose the user has separate professional and personal email
> accounts.  Their MTA is set to send as one of these accounts but they
> may want to report the bug using either their personal account (if the
> bug is not work-related) or professional account (if it affects systems
> they maintain professionally).
>  * To ease the sorting of messages, the user would prefer to report bugs
> using <name+bts at domain.tld> to automatically tag responses "bts" but
> would not want to set their address for all mail as
> <name+bts at domain.tld> or to change the address each time reportbug is used.
>  * The user is logged into a system as a contractor and the configured
> email for their system is either temporary (e.g. for the duration of the
> contract) or an email they prefer not to use for the purpose of
> submitting bugs.
>
>>>  Also that the From header should match the envelope
>>> sender, where possible.
>>
>> references to back up this assertion?
>
> This was poorly phrased on my part.  It's not that all mail should have
> the From header == envelope sender, but that when the envelope sender is
> not set to the From address it opens the door for problems on some
> systems.  If the MTA is not configured with a valid email address for
> the user the envelope sender will be sent as a locally-qualified address
> (e.g. user at hostname) which will be rejected by the BTS.[1]
>
> Hopefully that explains my thoughts somewhat.  If you would like a
> patch, let me know.
>
> Cheers,
> Kevin
>
>
> 1.   If a masquerade domain is set (so mail will be sent as
> user at masquerade) in which the username does not receive mail it may be
> rejected by sender verification depending on how the BTS is configured.
>  I can test this if you like.
>



-- 
Sandro Tosi (aka morph, morpheus, matrixhasu)
My website: http://matrixhasu.altervista.org/
Me at Debian: http://wiki.debian.org/SandroTosi