Complete your application process e-mail error

Hello,

After applying to become an editor for a particular category, I get the e-mail for which you are to reply to complete the application:


INSTRUCTIONS - please read and follow carefully.

To complete your application process, please reply to this message. This will confirm that we have your correct email address.


So I reply to the e-mail as it says and then about 1 minute later I get an e-mail which says this:


The original message was received at Fri, 23 May 2003 04:21:30 -0700 (PDT) from smtp@localhost

----- The following addresses had permanent fatal errors ----- apply2
(expanded from: <apply@dmoz.org&gt

----- Transcript of session follows -----
can't fork sendmail at /gh/bin/ghapply line 153, <MD5> chunk 23. 554 apply2... unknown mailer error 12

----- Original message follows -----


Should I try replying again?

I haven't looked in the internal forums yet this morning to see if this is a known bug, but this looks like something that will probably be temporary. I would suggest sending the reply again until it gets through.

Okay thanks, I just replied and it worked this time as I got back a message that says "thanks for applying"

Must have been a temporary problem like you stated.

The source of the error message, smtp@localhost, indicates that the error was at the sending end, not the dmoz end. Probably a resource allocation issue of some sort.

No that is incorrect. That message was caused by the DMOZ mail system. For one:

can't fork sendmail at /gh/bin/ghapply line 153, <MD5> chunk 23. 554 apply2... unknown mailer error 12

I can tell you from that line there is no way my server produced that error. Also

smtp@localhost

could be their host. If you look in the headers for example it says this:


Received: (from smtp@localhost) by dirt.netscape.com
id EAA00664 for <apply@dmoz.org>; Fri, 23 May 2003 04:21:30 -0700 (PDT)


If I look deeper into it, it appears the smtp@localhost is a server between my server and the DMOZ server. One hop before DMOZ's mail server. (Theoretically localhost could be any of the servers though). Anyway its not important as the problem is resolved. Thanks for the help though.

Judging by all of the problems we've been having recently, I'd say it was at the DMOZ end.

Having seen more information, I have to agree with that now.