[TriLUG] [OT] Apologies in advance

[Jeremy Portzer]

Brian Henning wrote:
> For work reasons I need an out-of-office auto reply for my absence next
> week.  I'm trying to suspend my TriLUG subscription, but the website
> doesn't want to load.  I apologize in advance if any autoresponses from
> me come to the list.

Hi Brian,

I suppose you may not receive this message, but the proper way to avoid 
this is to set up the auto-responder so it only replies when your email 
address is listed in the 'To:' field.  This won't occur with list emails 
like the TriLUG list.  It also helps avoid replies to spam messages 
which often don't have "To:" filled in correctly.  Most auto-responders 
built into modern email software work this way, except for Novell 
Groupwise which is the standard "bad citizen" in these waters (Microsoft 
has gotten it right for years, surprisingly).

I think the web site not loading was due to a DNS problem, according to 
traffic on the IRC channel (it appears to be corrected now).  It would 
be nice if these problems were reported here on the discussion list from 
time to time, if anything just to provide useful insight for beginner 
and intermediate system administrators here who may learn from reading 
about about a troubleshooting process.

--Jeremy