rjk@mgweed.UUCP (Randy King) (05/13/85)
<><><> I'm not sure of the dynamics of this situation, but lately I have started getting more and more mail from folks using some bizzare new mailer whose headers are breaking my mail servers. It a familiar problem; either the mail gets tacked on to the previous mail or if it is the first mail in /usr/mail then it is unreadable. Following is an example of the header; you will note that the date field in the From line is causing the problem. From mgweed!pegasus!hansen 12 May 1985 13:47 EDT FROM: hansen@pegasus.ATT.UUCP TO: mgweed!rjk DATE: 12 May 1985 13:47 EDT SUBJECT: Re: ... I really wish that people would not just start implementing their own defacto mailers that break existing mailers. I realize that this *may* be just barely RFC standard, but surely these things can be introduced in a more controlled manner. People like Tony are the ones that suffer, as their mail may not be getting through. Would someone care to shed some light on this mailer? Am I at fault? Do I need to fix my mailers? Randy King AT&T-CP@MG ihnp4!mgweed!rjk
honey@down.FUN (Peter Honeyman) (05/14/85)
You are surely not to blame here, Randy. Your mailer, probably mailx, a derivative of Mail, wants messages to be separated by a blank line followed by a valid "From " line. A valid "From " line has the following form: From <user> <ctime format date string> (Ignore any leading ">" inserted by rnews.) <user> is any string not containing whitespace. <ctime format date string> is exactly what it claims to be: the 26-character string described on the ctime man page. Locally, I validate the first line of each incoming message in rmail. If it's not right, I reject it immediately, with stderr "No From line !?!"; uuxqt then takes care of the rest. This has always produced immediate results. Emacs-based mailers seem to be the most frequent offenders, since they tend to shun unix mail altogether, and call uux directly. Peter