tron@amdahl.amdahl.com (Ronald S. Karr) (11/21/87)
Some Introduction:
A friend and I am writing a mailer which we want to be useful in both
pure RFC822 networks and UUCP-style networks. I also want the mailer
to be useful as a gateway between such networks. I have, working now,
what I consider to be very powerful capabilities for aliasing,
forwarding, routing and delivery. For these types of subsystems the
capabilities in sendmail or smail2.5 are a trivial case.
However, we have conflicting ideas concerning what to do with sender
addresses in headers. We do, now, support the idea that a pure !-path
coming in can be left as a !-path, with the current hostname prepended
(this is optional and is a function of the destination). However,
should I ever produce, in mail originated locally, a From: line in the
following form?
From: localhost!username
I can see one valid reason for doing this: if the localhost is not
within a registered domain (i.e., it is only in the .UUCP domain), then
the address is not, really, recognized outside of the UUCP zone. It
is true that some hosts on the internet have munged there mailers to
handle this as a special case, but it is not generally the case that:
From: username@localhost.UUCP
will work. However, gateways appear to do a reasonable job of
transforming:
From: path!localhost!username
into:
From: path!localhost!username@Gateway.Do.Main
Which will, generally, work.
Another reason for using localhost!username is that many sendmail
configurations can correctly send mail in registered domains to the
internet, but can't deliver to mail in the non-registered UUCP domain.
Thus, they can send to me at uts.amdahl.com, even though I am not on
the internet, because once it gets to the internet, the nameservers
there can find a gateway that can get mail to me (the MX record for
*.amdahl.com points to sun, which knows who we are).
We would like advice on this problem. To summarize: should From:
header fields in the form:
From: jqp@localhost.UUCP (J. Q. P.)
be the preferred, or only, form for sites which are in the UUCP zone
but are not in a registered domain? Or should it be possible, or
preferred for such sites to use:
From: localhost!jqp (J. Q. P.)
instead? For sites which are in a registered domain, there is no
question but that:
From: xyz@Registered.Do.Main (P. D. Q.)
should be used, of course. (Of course somebody, somewhere, will balk
at my use of "of course" in the previous sentence.)
If this is like all other two (or few) sided issues concerning header
formats, I expect that any collection of N people knowledgable on the
subject will have at least N differing opinions on the subject, no matter
how large N is.
tron |-<=>-| ARPAnet: amdahl!tron@Sun.COM
tron@uts.amdahl.com UUCPnet: {sun,decwrl,uunet}!amdahl!tron
--
[views above shouldn't be viewed as Amdahl views, or as views from Amdahl, or
as Amdahl views views, or as views by Mr. Amdahl, or as views from his house]jim@cs.strath.ac.uk (Jim Reid) (12/02/87)
In article <18533@amdahl.amdahl.com> tron@uts.amdahl.com (Ronald S. Karr) writes: >Some Introduction: >However, we have conflicting ideas concerning what to do with sender >addresses in headers. We do, now, support the idea that a pure !-path >coming in can be left as a !-path, with the current hostname prepended >(this is optional and is a function of the destination). However, >should I ever produce, in mail originated locally, a From: line in the >following form? > > From: localhost!username The answer is perhaps. In an ideal world, everyone will adhere to one standard for mail headers - RFC822 possibly, but X.400 is more likely. Until that glorious day arrives (if it ever does), mailers at the mail 'gateways' between networks will have little option but to munge addresses because of incompatible mail headers and addressing formats. What you mail system should do is rewrite mail headers into the appropriate form for transmission to a given host. In short, if your uucp neighbours only understand bang-style addresses, you mailer should only present bang-style paths to these sites. If some sites understand RFC822 (user@host.domain), then you should send them RFC822 style mail. What would be less easy for the mailer is separating your bang-stlye uucp neighbours from those who understand RFC822. The best mailers (MMDF or sendmail - no flames please!) take an input address, convert it to a canonical form and then rewrite the address in the appropriate style for the message transfer agent. This is the most sensible way of dealing with hybrid addresses like A!B@C. [Does that mean send by uucp to A for relaying to user B on host C or does it mean send to C for them to relay to user B on uucp host A? Then what if C (or A) doesn't like addresses with '!' (or '@') signs in them?] Jim -- ARPA: jim%cs.strath.ac.uk@ucl-cs.arpa, jim@cs.strath.ac.uk UUCP: jim@strath-cs.uucp, ...!seismo!mcvax!ukc!strath-cs!jim JANET: jim@uk.ac.strath.cs "JANET domain ordering is swapped around so's there'd be some use for rev(1)!"
ptrubey@clan.UUCP (Phil Trubey) (12/10/87)
In article <18533@amdahl.amdahl.com> tron@uts.amdahl.com (Ronald S. Karr) writes: >To summarize: should From: header fields in the form: > > From: jqp@localhost.UUCP (J. Q. P.) > >be the preferred, or only, form for sites which are in the UUCP zone >but are not in a registered domain? Or should it be possible, or >preferred for such sites to use: > > From: localhost!jqp (J. Q. P.) > >instead? Have it as a configuration option when the person is building your system from the source. I wish SMAIL allowed this! You can include guidelines for people to follow when choosing which From: header scheme to use. By the way, anybody know how to contort SMAIL so that it generates proper (ie domain style) From: lines?
karl@mumble.cis.ohio-state.edu (Karl Kleinpaste) (12/16/87)
ptrubey@clan.UUCP writes: By the way, anybody know how to contort SMAIL so that it generates proper (ie domain style) From: lines? Um...you mean smail *isn't* generating @-format From: lines? I'm running smail 2.5 on our 3B2s. When mail is sent from one of these machines, it gets From: lines in the proper format. Here's a little header test I just sent to myself from osu-cis... From osu-cis!Karl.Kleinpaste Wed Dec 16 09:03:31 1987 Received: by tut.cis.ohio-state.edu (5.52/0.2) id AA03132; Wed, 16 Dec 87 09:03:30 EST Received: by osu-cis.cis.ohio-state.edu (smail2.5) id AA01121; 16 Dec 87 09:02:00 EST (Wed) To: karl Subject: header test Date: 16 Dec 87 09:02:00 EST (Wed) >>>From: Karl.Kleinpaste@osu-cis.cis.ohio-state.edu Message-Id: <8712160902.AA01121@osu-cis.cis.ohio-state.edu> Looks normal to me... -=- Karl