How to enable DSN with Postfix

[Jay Chandler]

Hi,
I`m using Postfix version 2.4.5 and would like to enable DSN (Delivery
Status Notification) when messages are received and read. Does some
one could give me the correct configuration line to add inside main.cf
to do it. I`ve already read the small document DSN_README
(http://www.postfix.org/DSN_README.html) without success, thanks.

Those things are obnoxious.

That being said, Postfix supports them; you don't have to do anything
special to enable them.

[Victor Duchovni]

Hi,
I`m using Postfix version 2.4.5 and would like to enable DSN
(Delivery Status Notification) when messages are received and
read.

Postfix implements the Internet DSN protocols. These define how to
report delivery that is SUCCESSful, DELAYed, and FAILed. No DSN
protocol is defined for reporting when mail is read.
With Postfix, DSN is turned ON by default. DSN_README.html explains
how to turn it OFF.

The notices that are generated when messages are read are "MDNs" not
DSNs.

http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc2298

This is an end-to-end protocol between MUAs, the MTA (e.g. Postfix)
is not involved in MDN processing.

http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc2298#section-1
--
Viktor.

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If my response solves your problem, the best way to thank me is to not
send an "it worked, thanks" follow-up. If you must respond, please put
"It worked, thanks" in the "Subject" so I can delete these quickly.

[mouss]

ok, it`s possible with postfix to know when a message has been received by his/her recipient, I suppose no according to what you refer here.

what do you mean by "received"? if you mean "delivered to the mailbox",
then that's DSN. if you mean the user opens his MUA and
sees/reads/deletes/.... the message, then that's a MUA issue (postfix is
not involved).

[Victor Duchovni]

ok, it`s possible with postfix to know when a message has been received
by his/her recipient, I suppose no according to what you refer here.

Postfix handles delivery to the user's mailbox and supports *delivery* status
notification.

MUAs handle access to the mailbox, and some support message disposition
notification.

What are you looking for?

Note that delivery often involves multiple MTAs, and it is possible
that some don't support or refuse to offer DSN service. So success DSN
notices may be generated prior to final delivery, and the final status
may not be disclosed.
--
Viktor.

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If my response solves your problem, the best way to thank me is to not
send an "it worked, thanks" follow-up. If you must respond, please put
"It worked, thanks" in the "Subject" so I can delete these quickly.

[Victor Duchovni]

What I'm looking for is -> when some one from the Internet or some one
from the internal network of the company send an email to a recipient in
the company, then the people sending the message receive a confirmation
that the email has been received by the recipient. This should work from
the internal or the external network.

Even if they don't specifically request delivery confirmation? That's
what auto-responders do, not MDN or DSN (which are sender elected).

Find a good auto-reponder (there are many bad ones). The "vacation"
program is a reasonable autosponder that may meet your needs, but
some use cases require a different solution.
--
Viktor.

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If my response solves your problem, the best way to thank me is to not
send an "it worked, thanks" follow-up. If you must respond, please put
"It worked, thanks" in the "Subject" so I can delete these quickly.

[Victor Duchovni]

The vacation program is for vacation and send only one time or every
time the auto reply, and not when the sender want to know if the recipient
has received his/her message. I looking for something similar to what
Exchange does with return receipt.

You may be contradicting yourself. Return-receipts are typically
sender-requested, and are processed by Outlook (when the recipient
reads the message), not Exchange. These are actually MDNs, and are
easily requested by adding a "Disposition-Notification-To: <sender>"
header when the sender composes the message. There is of course no
guarantee that the receiving user will honour the request.

Is there a form of return receipts in Exchange that is always on for a
particular receiving mailbox even when not requested by senders?

If there is, it is effectively an auto-responder. I did mention that
vacation is not for all use cases, there are various flavours of
auto-responders.

Please describe your needs clearly and in detail. Someone may have
a suitable auto-responder to direct you to.
--
Viktor.

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If my response solves your problem, the best way to thank me is to not
send an "it worked, thanks" follow-up. If you must respond, please put
"It worked, thanks" in the "Subject" so I can delete these quickly.

[Victor Duchovni]

Viktor,
I want to send a message to Joe Bob and get a returned message
saying/confirming me that Joe Bob has received the message in is
mailbox.

Who is making the choice? You as the sender of the message, requesting
a receipt, or Joe Bob as the mailbox owner (or system administrator
on his behalf) requesting that receipts be sent for all messages from
all senders?

The former is MDN functionality, and is in fact handled by MUAs, but
Outlook/Exchange somewhat blur the boundary, because when a user
enables "always send requested receipts", it is not clear where the
logic is handled, but in general it is Outlook (MUA) and not Exchange
(MTA) that handles receipts.

Now I'm confused about who is responsible to send the reply
saying that Job Bob has received the message, to my knowledges it's
the MTA who should return this message

Yes, but perhaps your intuition is fallible...

Maybe I wrong here but I just want to know, find a way to get
confirmation from the remote mail server that my message to Joe Bob has
be delivered into his mailbox on the server.

If you as the sender want the confirmation, you have to ask, the mechanism
is MDN, and receipients are free to enable or disable MDN receipts in
their MUA. You can still ask of course, but silence is ambiguous.
--
Viktor.

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If my response solves your problem, the best way to thank me is to not
send an "it worked, thanks" follow-up. If you must respond, please put
"It worked, thanks" in the "Subject" so I can delete these quickly.

[Bill Cole]

Viktor,
I want to send a message to Joe Bob and get a returned message
saying/confirming me that Joe Bob has received the message in is
mailbox. Now I'm confused about who is responsible to send the reply
saying that Job Bob has received the message, to my knowledges it's
the MTA who should return this message and not the MUA because the
mbox is handle and managed by the MTA and confirmation message
doesn't mean that the recipient has read the message again but just
that it has been received. Maybe I wrong here but I just want to
know, find a way to get confirmation from the remote mail server
that my message to Joe Bob has be delivered into his mailbox on the
server.

See http://www.postfix.org/DSN_README.html

Of course, you cannot make someone else's mail server send DSN's if
they decide not to. You can only send mail that requests DSN's, set
your own mail server to support them, and hope for the best.

If Joe Bob's mail system is not configured to send DSN's, nothing you
do to your Postfix will overcome that. You need to also understand
that a positive DSN doesn't mean a message has been read or ever will
be read. There are even some mail systems configured to send a
positive DSN as they pipe a message to /dev/null.

[Victor Duchovni]

Post by Bill Cole

Viktor,
I want to send a message to Joe Bob and get a returned message
saying/confirming me that Joe Bob has received the message in is
mailbox. Now I'm confused about who is responsible to send the reply
saying that Job Bob has received the message, to my knowledges it's
the MTA who should return this message and not the MUA because the
mbox is handle and managed by the MTA and confirmation message
doesn't mean that the recipient has read the message again but just
that it has been received. Maybe I wrong here but I just want to
know, find a way to get confirmation from the remote mail server
that my message to Joe Bob has be delivered into his mailbox on the
server.

See http://www.postfix.org/DSN_README.html
Of course, you cannot make someone else's mail server send DSN's if
they decide not to. You can only send mail that requests DSN's, set
your own mail server to support them, and hope for the best.
If Joe Bob's mail system is not configured to send DSN's, nothing you
do to your Postfix will overcome that. You need to also understand
that a positive DSN doesn't mean a message has been read or ever will
be read. There are even some mail systems configured to send a
positive DSN as they pipe a message to /dev/null.

The OP is perhaps looking for MDNs. Though some MUAs may also request
DSNs, in which case, if at least the first MTA along the delivery path
supports DSN, there will be a delivery report, but it may be for a
handoff to an MTA that does not offer DSN, rather than for delivery to
the mailbox.

Anyway, Postfix supports as much of this as it its job. Over and out.
--
Viktor.

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If my response solves your problem, the best way to thank me is to not
send an "it worked, thanks" follow-up. If you must respond, please put
"It worked, thanks" in the "Subject" so I can delete these quickly.

[Val Polyakov]

First, a little background info:

OS: Red Hat Enterprise Linux AS release 4 (Nahant Update 5)
Postfix: postfix-2.2.10-1.RHEL4.2 (what comes standard with RHAS 4 update 5)

I'm also running the Trend Micro antispam/antivirus solution here, so I cannot
(unfortunately) upgrade the postfix that RHAS 4 update 5 came with.

Now, with all of that said, I have the following line in my main.cf :
transport_maps = hash:/etc/postfix/transport

I have the following in my /etc/postfix/transport:
vmsinfo.com :
.vmsinfo.com :
* smtp:lpo-smtp-external.vmsinfo.com


I, of course, ran the postmap /etc/postfix/transport and reload'ed postfix for
the changes to take effect.

However, what I'm noticing, is that this transports file is being completely
ignored.

Even when an email is sent to ***@vmsinfo.com (from the inside of our
intranet which uses this server with Postfix on it), this Postfix instance
still gives off the email to lpo-smtp-external.vmsinfo.com which is not the
best way to deliver this email.

What I also noticed is that even if I remove this line completely:
* smtp:lpo-smtp-external.vmsinfo.com
Postfix still gives off the internal emails to lpo-smtp-external.vmsinfo.com

That means Postfix is still looking at MX records.

How do I take care of this?

Thanks,

Val