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LetterRip v1 Change History

LetterRip v1.1 Changes

The SMTP engine now offers even higher performance when used with high volume mail lists. Deliveries to domains that have recently experienced problems are given a lower priority. If a problem occurs when sending to a domain, the server only allows one thread to attempt a connection to that domain on an hourly basis. This frees up threads for good domains.
Mail being retried is limited to a few connections. Mail that needs to be resent to domains that are experiencing connection problems are now limited to roughly a third of the available connections at any one time. This results in a faster turn-around on new mail sent to the list. Performance improvements will be more noticeable for high volume sites with a large number of subscribers.
List messages now include the X-List-Unsubscribe and X-List-Subscribe headers. These headers allow some email clients (e.g. Emailer 2.0 with AppleScripts) to automate the task of unsubscribing from a mailing list.
Old server log files residing in the "Archived Log Files" folder are now deleted after 10 days. This value can be changed using a resource editor and modifying the 'LRip' 10100 resource in the LetterRip server application.

Log entries are now made for the following conditions:

  • message rejected - invalid format
  • unsubscribe attempt failed - user not subscribed
  • subscribe attempt failed - list is private
  • subscribe attempt failed - already subscribed
  • a bad mail list name was specified

Invalid incoming messages are now logged separately from the mailer daemon log entry. The log entry is as follows:

message from <[email protected]> to list <listname> rejected - message has an invalid format

An incoming message is invalid if it does not comply with RFC 822. Specifically, if no From header exists or the address in the From header is not properly formatted.

The log entry "opening connection" now shows the actual domain name of the host that is being opened. If the sending address's domain is a mail exchange record, the actual domain name will likely be different.
LetterRip now supports the "listmaster", "postmaster", and "root" accounts. Any mail addressed to these accounts is redirected to the administrator's address.
The built-in accounts named "listmaster", "postmaster", and "root" are checked after the requests account. This allows these accounts to be used for the requests account. We recommend that you do not use these accounts for the requests account since they are normally administrative accounts.
Changed responses to begin with "Re" instead of "re".
Messages that did not have a Date header were rejected. They are now accepted and a Date header is added.
LetterRip Server is now more tolerant of low disk space conditions.
Fixed a bug that occurred when the server received a message that was addressed to three or more list addresses on the same LetterRip server.
Fixed a bug with mail exchange retries. A symptom of this bug was the log entry with the text "wrong state (-3155)". This fix means that for some domains a message now has a better chance of being delivered to a remote domain on the first connection attempt. This should result in less retry attempts and a reduction in server workload.
Fixed a minor problem with the mail exchanges. If for any reason a message cannot be sent to the preferred mail host of the mail exchange, the LetterRip server will try the next preferred host for that exchange. In previous versions, the server would not try other hosts in certain situations.
Fixed a few bugs associated with string parsing. In particular, unusually long names (people names) in the From header would cause problems.
Fixed a bug with the administrator that occurred when the administrator was connected and the server was quit using "Quit LetterRip Server" application. A crash would sometimes occur when reconnecting to the server.

LetterRip v1.0.2 Changes

Mail requiring re-sending will no longer be given a full 24 hours worth of re-tries if the server is quit and re-launched. In addition, the re-send timeout is now saved with the mail message on disk. The effect is this change is the dispersion of re-try attempts instead of all retries performed immediately after a re-launch which may starve any new outgoing mail.
Old DNS entries are now periodically flushed. Previously, old entries that were never reused would remain in memory indefinitely.
Fixed a bug with MIME digests. Even with a Mail List setting of "Generate MIME digest", the digest would eventually revert back to non-MIME.
Improved the format of MIME digests. LetterRip MIME digests are now properly burst by mailers that support MIME digest bursting.
Fixed a bug in the parsing code of RFC 822 address headers if the From or Reply-To header contents were unusually large (around 130 bytes).
Fixed a bug when an incoming message's subject was unusually large (greater than 128 characters).
Fixed a bug that occurred when an incoming message's body begins with the tab character. The resulted in the creation of an outgoing message whose headers included part of the original message's body.
Fixed a bug with importing. Addresses containing special characters are now accepted as valid. These special characters are: !#$%^&*-_=+{}|/'`~?
Fixed a bug that would allow the subscription of illegal email addresses. The most common occurrence is an address with no domain.
Fixed a bug that resulted in a system freeze. The occurrence of this bug was rare and was caused by (but not the fault of) a specific mail host when an SMTP error was generated.

Fixed a bug with parenthesis around subscriber names. If the From header was formatted as:

[email protected] (Real Name)

then the real name would be added to the subscriber list with the parenthesis. Now the parenthesis are stripped before being added to the subscriber list.

Due to a change in logic, large messages now have a better chance of succeeding on the first transmission thus avoiding unnecessary retries.

LetterRip v1.0.1 Changes

Fixed a bug that could show up when saving settings or server information a second time. For example, the first changes to a subscriber list would succeed, but making changes a second time would fail.

The bug would generally exhibit itself in two ways:

  • An out of memory message even though there was lots of free memory
  • The administrator disconnecting from the server

The most common time this occurred was when saving a subscriber entry or importing into a subscriber list.