New Cpanel 11 mail forwarding options - discard without bounce

[ncrossland]

Been trying the new options for forwarders and default mail.

Previously I had some default addresses and forwarders to :blackhole: This is now renamed "Discard (Not recommended)".

I've changed it to use the new "Discard with error to sender (at SMTP time)", which is presumably recommended, but now whenever this forwarder is triggered, it generates a bounce to the sender.

How can I set it to Discard at SMTP time (so it isn't Spamassassin scanned, etc) but without generating a bounce message? Or can I disable bounce messages server-wide? Does :blackhole: still scan with spamassassin before discarding?

[cPanelDavidG]

Been trying the new options for forwarders and default mail.

Previously I had some default addresses and forwarders to :blackhole: This is now renamed "Discard (Not recommended)".

I've changed it to use the new "Discard with error to sender (at SMTP time)", which is presumably recommended, but now whenever this forwarder is triggered, it generates a bounce to the sender.

How can I set it to Discard at SMTP time (so it isn't Spamassassin scanned, etc) but without generating a bounce message? Or can I disable bounce messages server-wide? Does :blackhole: still scan with spamassassin before discarding?

The issue is that nowadays :blackhole: takes up server resources whereas :fail: (discard with error to sender at SMTP time) doesn't use up any substantial server resources. There's a recent post by chirpy here on the forums that offers a very detailed explanation regarding why :fail: is better than :blackhole:.

Is there any particular reason you wish to avoid generating a bounce message? Note that the bounce message is generated by the server that is sending the email, not your server which is rejecting the email if your worry is resource consumption.

[ncrossland]

I thought that was the reason, it makes a lot of sense.

Is there any particular reason you wish to avoid generating a bounce message? Note that the bounce message is generated by the server that is sending the email, not your server which is rejecting the email if your worry is resource consumption.

Yes that was the worry -- when I did some testing, the bounce mail that came back was from Mailer-Daemon@cpanel.server.host.name, rather than from our outgoing SMTP server

This message was created automatically by mail delivery software.

A message that you sent could not be delivered to one or more of its
recipients. This is a permanent error. The following address(es) failed:

xxxxx@xxxxx.co.uk
No such person at this address

This was backed up by the mail headers of the bounce

Received: from mailnull by cpanel.server.host.name with local (Exim 4.66)
id 1IGG4Z-0001Ue-P0
for me@mydomain.com; Wed, 01 Aug 2007 16:25:15 +0100
X-Failed-Recipients: xxxxx@xxxxx.co.uk