Email Return path set to 'nobody'

[clive.aspen]

Hi,
I host a Website foe a client who has SMF 1.1.14 installed.
Shes been getting lots and lots of spammer robots trying to register.
The has chosen to manually accept or reject them.
However everytime she rejects a registration the email gets bounced back to me (nobody@my server)
THe email address the spammers are using is bogus, but it seems that SMF has not set the return path to the 'webmasters email address' as input in the configuration, so iut defaults to 'nobody'
So the email is bounced back to me 'nobody@myserver'
How do I stop this, as I'm getting hundreds of these rejection emails..
Why isnt the return path set to the webmasters address?

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:

  [email protected]
    The mail server could not deliver mail to [email protected].  The account or domain may not exist, they may be blacklisted, or missing the proper dns entries.

------ This is a copy of the message, including all the headers. ------

Return-path: <nobody@server.######.co.uk>
Received: from nobody by server.#####.co.uk with local (Exim 4.69)
   (envelope-from <nobody@server#####.co.uk>)
   id 1QcD0J-0005HI-PT
   for [email protected]; Thu, 30 Jun 2011 09:53:43 +0100
To: [email protected]
Subject: Welcome to itchybaby
From: "itchybaby" <#######@hotmail.com>
Date: Thu, 30 Jun 2011 08:53:43 -0000
X-Mailer: SMF
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: multipart/alternative; boundary="SMF-1dc8830f7e790d80dc83e32c7ed7fb42"
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
Message-Id: <E1QcD0J-0005HI-PT@server.######.co.uk>


Your registration request at itchybaby has been received, bapabussy.

The username you registered with was bapabussy and the password was IzRGOKK942.

Before you can login and start using the forum, your request will be reviewed and approved.  When this happens, you will receive another email from this address.

[clive.aspen]

this is the site;
http://itchybaby.co.uk/itchyforum/ [nofollow]

Please anyone ! Still getting hundreds of these bounced back emails with no return path set.

[clive.aspen]

 

[Aleksi "Lex" Kilpinen]

Change the webmaster e-mail address in the SMF Server settings? You could use a [email protected] address, unless your server is configured to catch all incoming mail regardless if the address exists... If it is, then perhaps set up noreply to work as a blackhole?

[clive.aspen]

Hi ,

Thanks for the reply.
The thing is the emails are not going to the webmaster address set up in config..
Thats the point.. The webmaster is rejecting these registrations, most of them are bogus registrations with false email addresses.
As they are false email addresses they are being bounced back... but not to the webmaster but to the default server address 'nobody'@myserver.com
It doesnt matter what email address we put in the 'webmaster address' in config, the bounced emails always get returned to the default server address..

Why isnt the 'rejection' email being sent from the 'webmaster' address... If it was it would bounce back to that address.. which it doesnt.

[Aleksi "Lex" Kilpinen]

As far as I know - it should be sent from the address set up as webmaster address.
Are you using PHP or smtp for mail?

[clive.aspen]

The server uses smtp as far as I'm aware.

I think this guy is having the same problem;
http://www.simplemachines.org/community/index.php?topic=440988.0

[Aleksi "Lex" Kilpinen]

I believe smtp may bind the sender address to the smtp account used to send mail, so that might explain it.

[clive.aspen]

Thanks for the reply.... 

I see.

However this is a bit of a problem as I am unable to change the server to use SuPHP due to the file and folder permissions that requires.

Hhhmm

[Aleksi "Lex" Kilpinen]

Perhaps create a new smtp account to use for this purpose only?

[clive.aspen]

Apologies for not understanding..
What do you mean exactly, I'm afraid I'm no expert.

[Aleksi "Lex" Kilpinen]

OK,

So there are two different methods for sending e-mails from SMF.

1) PHP Sendmail. Built in to SMF, uses PHP's built in sendmail function
-> http://www.php.net/manual/en/function.mail.php

2) An e-mail account somewhere, using SMTP
-> http://fi.wikipedia.org/wiki/SMTP

The SMF side of these can be mostly configured in
Admin -> Maintenance -> Mail -> Settings
Admin -> Configuration -> Server Settings -> Feature Configuration



EDIT: Corrected the SMF part, Sorry - I was thinking of 2.0 there first...

[clive.aspen]

Thanks !  I didnt see the 'feature configuration' page before !

[Aleksi "Lex" Kilpinen]

OK - Now test the different options around, and see what works best on your server.

[LiroyvH]

The nobody is most likely because your PHP is not running as CGI or suPHP and thus runs under the user "nobody".
That's a setting at your host. Using SMTP however should, I think, indeed solve that.

[clive.aspen]

Thanks very much for your help