[net.news.b] News 2.10.2 screws up From line, does 2.10.3?

stephen@comp.lancs.ac.uk (Stephen J. Muir) (08/06/86)

One of our users has his FULLNAME set to "Rodge-Baby!!".  (Our system manager
won't let me stop users running "chfn").  In our particular case, it is
retrieved from the /etc/passwd file in Berkeley format.  When he submits a
news article, the From line becomes:

From: rodger@comp.lancs.ac.uk (Baby!!)

I do not see any point in deleting anything before the hyphen.  To make matters
worse, when it arrives at one of our neighbouring sites, it gets rewritten
again.  One of them changed it to:

From: rodger@dcl-cs.ac.uk

and another to:

From: rodger@cs.strath.ac.uk

They are also running 2.10.2 news.  This is ludicrous!  Why munge the From
line?  The From line should be left completely alone -- I see no reason to
change it.

As far as news is concerned, the Path line is the only one that needs modified.
As far as mail is concerned, only the Reply-To line should be used (although I
don't see any reason to modify this either).

Now, if the From line contained

From: dcl-cs!rodger

*then* I can see the sense in changing it, but not otherwise.
-- 
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mark@cbosgd.UUCP (Mark Horton) (08/10/86)

In article <340@comp.lancs.ac.uk> stephen@comp.lancs.ac.uk (Stephen J. Muir) writes:
>One of our users has his FULLNAME set to "Rodge-Baby!!".  (Our system manager
>won't let me stop users running "chfn").  In our particular case, it is
>retrieved from the /etc/passwd file in Berkeley format.  When he submits a
>news article, the From line becomes:
>
>From: rodger@comp.lancs.ac.uk (Baby!!)
>
>I do not see any point in deleting anything before the hyphen.

But then, you aren't running System V.  The RJE convention looks like this:

 * (b) BTL RJE: the gecos field looks like
 *	: junk - full name ( junk :
 *     where the "junk -" is optional.

Stripping out the junk is the right thing to do on such a system, but
it does lose for people with hyphenated names.  While it's hard to have
much sympathy for Rodge-Baby!!, there are people with legitimate
hyphenated names.

I had thought this code was ifdeffed, but evidently it isn't.  If you
look in fullname.c, in 2.10.*, you'll see the following code near the
beginning of buildname:

		if (*p == '-') {
			bp = buf;
			p++;
		}
This should be ifdeffed or taken out if you don't run RJE.

>To make matters
>worse, when it arrives at one of our neighbouring sites, it gets rewritten
>again.  One of them changed it to:
>
>From: rodger@dcl-cs.ac.uk
>
>and another to:
>
>From: rodger@cs.strath.ac.uk

I have no idea whether comp.lancs.ac.uk is equivalent to dcl-cs.ac.uk
or cs.strath.ac.uk, but in general, you're right, the From line isn't
supposed to be munged once it gets enterred onto the net.  B news doesn't
alter it, as far as I know; perhaps something else strange is going on.

	Mark