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Autoresponders

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h o m e

By using an autoresponder, you can let people know that their message has been delivered. Whenever somebody sends mail to an autoresponder-enabled address, they immediately receive a reply with a message you configure.

An AUTORESPONDER simply sends a response to the original sender to let them know that their message was delivered.

An AUTOREPLY will also quote everything they wrote, so they can be sure the entire message made it safely.

When setting up an autoresponder, there are 5 items to configure:

TIME [number of seconds to remember past addresses]
NUMBER [maximum number of replies to an address within TIME]
FILE [the file containing your message]
DIR [a directory to keep temporary files]
QUOTE [yes or no, whether to show what they wrote]

Here is an example autoresponder for a sales address:

in the file [.qmail-sales]

|/usr/local/bin/autorespond 1800 3 salesmessage.txt salesmessage.tmp no
your.email@address.com

in the file [salesmessage.txt]

From: your name <your.email@address.com>
Subject: (subject of your autoresponder)
thanks for your message, and interest in our products!
we'll get back to you as soon as possible.

The TIME option is 1800 seconds, which is 30 minutes. After 3 replies (to the same address) within 30 minutes, no more will be sent to them. This is very important for stopping endless loops between two autoresponders.
The FILE is a text file that you upload to your home directory, and DIR is an empty directory you create.
In this case, QUOTE is set to no. The second line in the .qmail-sales file will send a copy of the message to the normal mailbox. If you leave out the second line, then you'll never receive the original mail. This is rarely desired.

To create a new auoresponder, there are 3 steps to take:

Edit your .qmail-whatever file, and insert this line:
|/usr/local/bin/autorespond 1800 3 mymessage.txt mymessage.tmp no
Also insert your email address.
Create mymessage.txt with the message you want to give
Create an empty directory called mymessage.tmp

Then, send a test message to yourself to make sure it's working the way you expect.

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