jww@sdcsvax.UUCP (Joel West) (08/14/85)
> > /***** hpfclo:net.mail / nsc!chuqui / 7:03 pm Jul 22, 1985*/ > > I'm starting to see problems that look like smart mailers messing up > > addresses. I **think** it may have something to do with some of the > > assumptions in the gatech sendmail configuration files -- I'm hacking on > > them now and some things don't look quite right. > ... > > From: ihnp4!purdue!jsq%im4u.UTEXAS@ut-sally.ARPA (John Quarterman) (becomes)> > To: ut-sally.ARPA!ihnp4!purdue!jsq%im4u.UTEXAS (John Quarterman) > > Mailers should leave the sender's address the hell alone. ... > When I reply to this mail (consider me a novice), my user-agent > constructs the reply address, which (SHOCK!) just happens to > be the exact same thing as is in his mail (ie. NO MUNGING EVER!). > -- jad -- > John A. Dilley, FSD > Fort Collins, CO > > ARPA: terrapin@Purdue.EDU > UUCP: {ihnp4}! hpfcla!jad Here, here! Once an address is munged, no reasonable amount of artificial intelligence is going to be able to unambiguously unmung it all of the time. Only a few humans who know the various local paths and gateways can scan the "To:" above and figure that "jsq%im4u.TEXAS@ut-sally.ARPA" is the recipient. I'd like to propose a least-change approach that will work with both the "cute-as-a-shithouse" mailers and the dumbest of dumb V6 mailers. Let's forget (for the time being) about ever getting a reasonable "From xxx!yyy" or "From: yyy@xxx" line. Write those off as being the province of the overly smart or dumb. Instead, the secret fraternity of pathless mailers can hide the unmunged address in a different field -- one that the other mailers don't know how to mung. "Reply-To:" is an obvious candidate, but it might be safer to pick something totally new and unused: From-Address: Sender: etc. etc. Then, these fraternity members can look for this secret header (the heathen will go on their merry way using From or From:). Being unmunged (nobody knows how to mung it) the local mailer can use this, where available, to feed to a smart router. Adding the new header is a snap--any sendmail site can do it in 5 minutes. And while we're all waiting for new versions of /ucb/mail to support this, we can manually type in this unmunged address (typically 10-20 chars) as needed to fool the overly cute mailers. Any takers? Joel West CACI, Inc. - Federal (c/o UC San Diego) {ucbvax,decvax,ihnp4}!sdcsvax!jww jww@SDCSVAX.ARPA
jer@peora.UUCP (J. Eric Roskos) (08/18/85)
> Instead, the secret fraternity of pathless mailers can hide the unmunged > address in a different field -- one that the other mailers don't know how > to mung. "Reply-To:" is an obvious candidate, but it might be safer to > pick something totally new and unused ... > Any takers? Yep. We've been doing that here for a couple of weeks now, during which time I've sent it through most of the gateways, and it works! Since the RFC guarantees certain strings will never be used (and thus can be used for user-extensions), it's possible to choose something that will REMAIN "totally new and unused". Unfortunately, if you ever established it as a standard, you can bet some of those CAASH mailers would start rewriting it for you, just to help you out... actually I've been considering randomly choosing one of a large set of field names for each message, sufficiently large as to discourage including the list in any Sendmail rewriting grammar, to assure that it will be un-munged, until such time as "artifical" intelligence approaches the level of "genuine" intelligence... at which time (oh, never mind... that was a couple of years ago, in net.unix-wizards). We also use those extension-fields to capture the formerly-lost "remote from" UUCP lines into an X-UUCP-SENT field. -- Shyy-Anzr: J. Eric Roskos UUCP: ..!{decvax,ucbvax,ihnp4}!vax135!petsd!peora!jer US Mail: MS 795; Perkin-Elmer SDC; 2486 Sand Lake Road, Orlando, FL 32809-7642 "Gurl ubyq gur fxl/Ba gur bgure fvqr/Bs obeqreyvarf..."