acadia@cs.dal.ca (Peter Steele) (12/18/90)
I'm having a sendmail problem for which I've not been able to come up with
an adequate solution. When I send mail out from either of two separate Unix
systems we have here (a Sun 4/280 and a CDC 4680) the "From:" line generated
by sendmail is insufficient for recipients to use in replies. For example,
if I mail from my Sun account to some site outside of Acadia, the "From:"
line looks like this:
From: peter@aucs (Peter Steele)
where aucs is the host name of the Sun 4. When the recipient tries to reply
to this message, sendmail assumes aucs is the name of a machine in its
domain and consequently fails to delivery the mail as it should. The correct
"From:" should include our domain:
From: peter@aucs.acadiau.ca (Peter Steele)
This behaviour is exhibited on both of our Unix machines. Although I have
made several changes to my sendmail.cf file, none are completely adequate
to solve this problem. Furthermore, I have talked to other sites with
virtually identical sendmail.cf files who do not have this problem, and
others who do (including CDC tech support). If anyone has some idea what
is causing this problem I would appreciate hearing from you. Thanks.
Peter Steele, Systems Software Analyst
Acadia University, Wolfville, NS Canada
Internet: Peter@aucs.acadiau.ca
Voice: 902-542-2201-121rickert@mp.cs.niu.edu (Neil Rickert) (12/19/90)
In article <1990Dec18.125202.26092@cs.dal.ca> acadia@cs.dal.ca (Peter Steele) writes: >I'm having a sendmail problem for which I've not been able to come up with >an adequate solution. When I send mail out from either of two separate Unix >systems we have here (a Sun 4/280 and a CDC 4680) the "From:" line generated >by sendmail is insufficient for recipients to use in replies. For example, >if I mail from my Sun account to some site outside of Acadia, the "From:" >line looks like this: > > From: peter@aucs (Peter Steele) > >others who do (including CDC tech support). If anyone has some idea what >is causing this problem I would appreciate hearing from you. Thanks. This problem is caused by vendors who distribute software and setup instructions which by default create bad addresses. Sun systems provide two versions of 'sendmail.cf'. The installation default appears to be 'sendmail.subsidiary.cf' which is hopelessly inadequate for anything other than local mail. The other 'sendmail.main.cf' can be adapted to do things correctly if your system is otherwise set up properly, and if you follow the instructions inside the config file as to what should be changed. The easiest approach is to define a relay mailer (as 'ddn') and a relay host (a co-operative Internet neighbor which knows how to handle mail). Then all non-local mail will be forwarded to the relay host for further handling. -- =*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*= Neil W. Rickert, Computer Science <rickert@cs.niu.edu> Northern Illinois Univ. DeKalb, IL 60115 +1-815-753-6940