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When we fail to process mail, tell the user about it

Authored by epriestley <git@epriestley.com> on Apr 4 2014, 03:43.

Description

When we fail to process mail, tell the user about it

Summary:
Ref T4371. Ref T4699. Fixes T3994.

Currently, we're very conservative about sending errors back to users. A concern I had about this was that mistakes could lead to email loops, massive amounts of email spam, etc. Because of this, I was pretty hesitant about replying to email with more email when I wrote this stuff.

However, this was a long time ago. We now have Message-ID deduplication, "X-Phabricator-Sent-This-Mail", generally better mail infrastructure, and rate limiting. Together, these mechanisms should reasonably prevent anything crazy (primarily, infinite email loops) from happening.

Thus:

  • When we hit any processing error after receiving a mail, try to send the author a reply with details about what went wrong. These are limited to 6 per hour per address.
  • Rewrite most of the errors to be more detailed and informative.
  • Rewrite most of the errors in a user-facing voice ("You sent this mail..." instead of "This mail was sent..").
  • Remove the redundant, less sophisticated code which does something similar in Differential.

Test Plan:

  • Using scripts/mail/mail_receiver.php, artificially received a pile of mail.
  • Hit a bunch of different errors.
  • Saw reasonable error mail get sent to me.
  • Saw other reasonable error mail get rate limited.

Reviewers: btrahan

Reviewed By: btrahan

Subscribers: epriestley

Maniphest Tasks: T3994, T4371, T4699

Differential Revision: https://secure.phabricator.com/D8692

Details

Committed
epriestley <git@epriestley.com>Apr 4 2014, 03:43
Pushed
aubortJan 31 2017, 17:16
Parents
rPHf9a92c7631aa: Sort inline comments by id in case of ties
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Event Timeline

epriestley <git@epriestley.com> committed rPHd9cdbdb9fae9: When we fail to process mail, tell the user about it (authored by epriestley <git@epriestley.com>).Apr 4 2014, 03:43