Return-Path and mutt

ttavoy

When a web app calls mutt (with no .muttrc) to send email, the result contains headers of the form

Return-Path: name@host.opalstack.com
From: name@host.opalstack.com

(where 'name' and 'host' are the user and server where the app is installed)

But name@host.opalstack.com is not a working email address (in the sense that trying to send email to such an address from gmail yields "Your message couldn't be delivered ... because the remote server is misconfigured ... The response from the remote server was: ... Relay access denied")

One can correct the 'From' header by using the mutt option

-e 'my_hdr From:myname@mydomain.com'

but trying the same thing for Return-Path has no effect.

Why do I think a misconfigured (or at least questionable) Return-Path header could be a problem?

(1) it could reduce the deliverability of the mail if the remote server checks the headers thoroughly
(2) if the mail is undelivered, it would reduce the chances of a failure notification being sent back

Please advise.

sean

If you want to set the sender and return-path for mutt then please configure mutt by adding the following to ~/.muttrc for the shell user running the web app that is calling mutt:

set from="myname@mydomain.com"
set envelope_from=yes

Hope this helps 🙂

ttavoy

sean Thank you, that works nicely.

(Also worth noting, it's enough to add just "set envelope_from=yes" to .muttrc and keep "my_hdr From:..." in the mutt command line, so that one can vary the 'From' address without having to edit .muttrc)

This was worth doing ... it turns out that the mere existence of a one-line .muttrc containing "set envelope_from=yes" can reduce X-Spam-Status scores for potentially every email which mutt sends (for example, in one case, from 1.20 to negative -0.50)