[Alpine-info] "Document Request" and "alpine-count"

[Doug Barton]

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On 05/09/2011 10:42, Benjamin R. Haskell wrote:

| On Mon, 9 May 2011, vex at vin.bg.ac.rs wrote:

|

|> Hello all,

|>

|> I searched on Google and this mailing list archive, but couldn't find

|> the explanation to this:

|>

|> I have 3 messages stuck in my mailq looking like this:

|>

|> From: hash_08298838 at ourdomain.com

|> To: alpine-count at docserver.cac.washington.edu

|> Subject: Document Request

|> Message-ID: <alpine.LNX.2.00.1105051008420.4165 at host.ourdomain.com>

|> User-Agent: Alpine 2.00 (LNX 1167 2008-08-23)

|>

|> Document request: Alpine-2.00 for New Users

|>

|> (NOTE: ourdomain.com was put instead of the real domain)

|>

|> Did users press something in Alpine to trigger this? We don't have any

|> users in form of hash_nnnnnnnn at ourdomain.com, why are they sending

|> anything to alpine-count at docserver.cac.washington.edu and what do

|> "Subject: Document Request" and message body "Document request:

|> Alpine-2.00 for New Users" mean?

|>

|> Thanks in advance for any kind of info and sorry if this was already

|> asked, as I said I didn't find much info using search.

|

| This is part of PINE's phone_home routine that Alpine inherited. If you

| start Alpine for the first time, it prompts with a one-time message

| asking if you want to send an anonymous message to be counted as an

| Alpine user. I wouldn't be surprised if that UW address were

| decommissioned.

|

| Since the main point of the phone_home was to provide justification for

| continued development efforts from the UW staff, which have now been

| discontinued, it probably makes sense to remove this entirely from Alpine.

|

| The variables that control whether that prompt is displayed can't be

| overridden at a systemwide level, unfortunately, so you can't just pop

| something into /etc/pine.conf. Google «disable Alpine greeting text» for

| more discussions.

|

| If you really need these messages stopped now, you can patch Alpine to

| do nothing in the phone_home() function (in alpine/send.c around line

| 5472). (Quicker and easier than trying to excise it.) e.g.:

|

| void

| phone_home(char *addr)

| {

| return; /* insert this line */

| char tmp[MAX_ADDRESS];

| ENVELOPE *outgoing;


I just added a more complete patch to the FreeBSD port of Alpine if
anyone is interested:

http://www.freebsd.org/cgi/cvsweb.cgi/ports/mail/alpine/files/patch-newuser?rev=1.1;content-type=text%2Fplain


hth,

Doug

- -- 

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