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  1. Jira Data Center
  2. JRASERVER-11074

Mail service should ignore obvious mail bounces

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    • We collect Jira feedback from various sources, and we evaluate what we've collected when planning our product roadmap. To understand how this piece of feedback will be reviewed, see our Implementation of New Features Policy.

      NOTE: This suggestion is for JIRA Server. Using JIRA Cloud? See the corresponding suggestion.

      JIRA's mail service (which processes incoming mails) should have the ability to ignore mail bounces, so that they do not result in new issues (and possible mail loops).

      Of the jira-user bounces I receive:

      • 75% have a Content-Type: multipart/report header
      • 17% are from *mailer-daemon@'
      • 8% are from majordomo, and the subject starts with "BOUNCE" (most people wouldn't get these).

      Of bounces to personal mail, almost 100% are covered by the first two of these heuristics.

      Almost none of these bounces have the Precedence: bulk header, which we added a check for in an attempt to avoid bounces.

      So without going overboard and implementing a full mail filter in JIRA, I think we could identify most mail bounces with 2 simple hardcoded rules.

            [JRASERVER-11074] Mail service should ignore obvious mail bounces

            Betsy Schwartz added a comment -

            upvoting, our logs are full of noise about this, makes it hard to see genuine issues.

            Betsy Schwartz added a comment - upvoting, our logs are full of noise about this, makes it hard to see genuine issues.

            Cameron Stewart added a comment -

            Bounces should in theory should have a blank envelop sender. This should be recorded in the email by a MTA as a "Return-Path" header.

            http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc2821#section-4.5.5

            Cameron Stewart added a comment - Bounces should in theory should have a blank envelop sender. This should be recorded in the email by a MTA as a "Return-Path" header. http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc2821#section-4.5.5

            Andy Brook added a comment -

            cstewart1 - can you expand on what you mean by a null Return-Path?

            Andy Brook added a comment - cstewart1 - can you expand on what you mean by a null Return-Path?

            Cameron Stewart added a comment -

            Got burnt by this as well. It seems JIRA doesn't filter null Return-Path's which it seems are supposed to be sent on all email bounces.

            Cameron Stewart added a comment - Got burnt by this as well. It seems JIRA doesn't filter null Return-Path's which it seems are supposed to be sent on all email bounces.

            Andy Brook [Plugin People] added a comment -

            Hi Mark, if its a significant problem for you, JEMH has subject match filtering and remote sender blacklisting to auto drop bounces and out of office noise.

            Andy Brook [Plugin People] added a comment - Hi Mark, if its a significant problem for you, JEMH has subject match filtering and remote sender blacklisting to auto drop bounces and out of office noise.

            Mark Love added a comment -

            +1

            We've had mail loops twice, due to spelling mistakes in emails. Each time it created 1000+ comments on an email with each "undelivered" message causing a comment, that triggered a notification, etc, etc. And there's no easy way to delete comments!

            The jira email watcher should definitely be enhanced to allow delivery failures, receipts, etc to be ignored.

            Mark Love added a comment - +1 We've had mail loops twice, due to spelling mistakes in emails. Each time it created 1000+ comments on an email with each "undelivered" message causing a comment, that triggered a notification, etc, etc. And there's no easy way to delete comments! The jira email watcher should definitely be enhanced to allow delivery failures, receipts, etc to be ignored.

            Nick Mason added a comment -

            There's some suggestions for server-side filtering in the Creating Issues and Comments from Email documentation.

            Nick Mason added a comment - There's some suggestions for server-side filtering in the Creating Issues and Comments from Email documentation.

            Matthieu DUCROS added a comment -

            any known workaround would be great. Thanks

            Matthieu DUCROS added a comment - any known workaround would be great. Thanks

            Jim Birch added a comment - - edited

            A nice simple way to handle this (for me at least) would be to have a rejection regex, like the splitregex in the POP3 Service's Regex Comment Handler. This would allow it to be tuned to local mail services. Rejected emails could be forwarded to an Admin account, so that the problem is fixed.

            In our case, our Exchange system sends mail box full NDRs messages with the original subject. This still has the issue ID so they get picked up as another email comment and a loop starts.

            Also, anything with precedence bulk should be rejected too. This could be a checkbox but I don't see why anyone would ever want them. Of course, this relies on mail systems putting precedence bulk on NDRs but they don't always seem to, so the rejection regex would be needed.

            Jim Birch added a comment - - edited A nice simple way to handle this (for me at least) would be to have a rejection regex, like the splitregex in the POP3 Service's Regex Comment Handler. This would allow it to be tuned to local mail services. Rejected emails could be forwarded to an Admin account, so that the problem is fixed. In our case, our Exchange system sends mail box full NDRs messages with the original subject. This still has the issue ID so they get picked up as another email comment and a loop starts. Also, anything with precedence bulk should be rejected too. This could be a checkbox but I don't see why anyone would ever want them. Of course, this relies on mail systems putting precedence bulk on NDRs but they don't always seem to, so the rejection regex would be needed.

            Jeff Turner added a comment -

            For now it's necessary to have an external program (like procmail) filter email before it gets to the POP/IMAP box. Spam filtering can also be done here.

            Jeff Turner added a comment - For now it's necessary to have an external program (like procmail) filter email before it gets to the POP/IMAP box. Spam filtering can also be done here.

              Unassigned Unassigned
              7ee5c68a815f Jeff Turner
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                Created:
                Updated: