[net.mail.headers] sendmail chops addresses

bandy@lll-lcc.UUcp (Andrew Scott Beals) (02/25/86)

In article <11992@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU> fair@ucbarpa.berkeley.edu.BERKELEY.EDU (Erik E. &) writes:
>There have been some misconceptions and I have a point to add:

And a point of information that I would like to clear. (You really
should get someone to fix rrn, Erik)

>1. sendmail does loop detection by counting Received: headers,
>	WITH ITS OWN HOSTNAME IN THEM. After 30 such lines (i.e.
>	thirty times through this host), the letter gets mailed
>	to postmaster. It does not arbitrarily throw away letters
>	that have passed through 30 hosts.

As distributed, MAXATOM (in src/conf.h) is set to 100. This is the
allowable number of tokens in an address. "eric@berkeley" is three
atoms.

Addresses longer than MAXATOM will get truncated. This usually
creates addresses that look like:
	one!and!another!hop!thru!bel!tel!land!before!we!reach!ihnp4!

With the address getting chopped off somewhere in the middle. Sigh.
Unfortunately, this also seems to be the way that sendmail is
distributed with other systems (Pyramid).
-- 
I'm PROUD to be a CARBON-BASED lifeform!

andy beals
bandy@lll-crg.arpa	{ihnp4,seismo,qantel,sun}!lll-crg!bandy
LLNL, P.O. Box 808, L-419, Livermore CA 94550 (415) 423-1948