kevin@harvard.ARPA (Kevin Crowston) (11/25/85)
I'm trying to write an SMTP server for our local
network and have a question about return addresses.
The machine that hosts the SMTP server is registered with the local
domain server, but not with the NIC, (a situation that is unlikely to
change in the near future due to some political problems here).
We can receive mail using the "%" hack, by sending it first to a local
machine that is registered with the NIC and which does the domain
trick and sends it on to us.
My question is, what should I put in the headers of our outgoing mail?
Currently I use person%localhost@arpahost in both the header and in
the SMTP dialogue (ie. I send MAIL FROM:<person%local@arpa>). Is this
okay? It seems to give slightly weird headers in the received mail; I
get both a From: line and a From_: line, the first of which lists the
arpa host twice (I think an example will be clearest:
From :kevin%MIT-SLOAN.MIT.EDU@MIT-MC.ARPA@MIT-MC.ARPA Mon Nov 25 12:19:42 1985
Received: from MIT-SLOAN.MIT.EDU by MIT-MC.ARPA 25 Nov 85 12:19:32 EST
Received: from MITMS1-E52: by MIT-SLOAN.MIT.EDU; 25-Nov-85 12:19:32
Message-Id: <531756324.262448728@MIT-SLOAN.MIT.EDU>
From: kevin%MIT-SLOAN.MIT.EDU@MIT-MC.ARPA
To: kevin@harvard.ARPA
Subject: This is a test
Sender:
Date: 25 Nov 85 12:18
Status: R
This is a brief example.
Kevin
Any suggestions about the "right" thing to do will be greatly
appreciated.
Kevin Crowston
MIT Sloan School of Management
kevin%mit-sloan.mit.edu@mit-mc.arpa
kevin@harvard.arpazben@umd5.UUCP (11/26/85)
In article <48@brl-tgr.ARPA> kevin@harvard.ARPA (Kevin Crowston) writes: >Currently I use person%localhost@arpahost in both the header and in >the SMTP dialogue (ie. I send MAIL FROM:<person%local@arpa>). Is this >okay? It seems to give slightly weird headers in the received mail; I >get both a From: line and a From_: line, the first of which lists the >arpa host twice (I think an example will be clearest: > > From_:kevin%MIT-SLOAN.MIT.EDU@MIT-MC.ARPA@MIT-MC.ARPA Mon Nov 25 12:19:42 > From: kevin%MIT-SLOAN.MIT.EDU@MIT-MC.ARPA You probably do *NOT* want to put the hacked version into the SMTP dialog. What is happening is that the ARPA host is also adding its name to the path, so you end up with two copies. If you just put "person@local" into the dialog, MIT-MC.ARPA should create one of the two following forms: person%local@MIT-MC.ARPA @MIT-MC.ARPA:person@local which is (I believe) the right thing to do. Note also that many people use the buzzword 'Out-Of-Band' to refer to the data in the SMTP dialog, since it is not part of the message text (In-Band) information. As to the headers. If MIT-MC is "munging" headers, you do not want to put the hack there. This seems to be the case from the information you gave. So you probably do not want to put the hack in at all. If software everywhere is working correctly, you do not need to. Don't treat this as gospel from on high though - experiment and use whatever seems to work correctly in all cases. Ben Cranston POSTMASTER@UMD2 -- Ben Cranston ...{seismo!umcp-cs,ihnp4!rlgvax}!cvl!umd5!zben zben@umd2.ARPA