news@cullvax.UUCP (Mail and USENET News System maintenance account) (12/03/86)
We are a UUCP site that is fed by an ARPA site. Incoming ARPA messages used to come to us with headers saying things like From: arpa-feed!user@arpa.site which worked fine--one could reply to it, etc. Recently this has changed (the "arpa-feed!" part isn't added), so return addresses have to be composed manually. I complained to the postmaster that this makes the From: lines unusable for sending replies. His reply was to quote from RFC 976 that any transformation from a valid domain address was forbidden, even if the address that was sent on was unusable to the recipient. He suggested upgrading our mail software. This strikes me as quite unreasonable. As far as I can see, the only genuine need in address manipulations is that any address sent to a machine must be usable by that machine. It used to work and now it doesn't. Am I being unreasonable? Dale
kre@munnari.oz (Robert Elz) (12/04/86)
In article <597@cullvax.UUCP>, news@cullvax.UUCP writes : > Incoming ARPA messages used to come to us with headers saying things like > From: arpa-feed!user@arpa.site > which worked fine--one could reply to it, etc. Recently this has > changed (the "arpa-feed!" part isn't added) > .... > It used to work and now it doesn't. Am I being unreasonable? Yes, I think you are. To do what you want properly, your feed site would have to know the characteristics of every site it feeds (and really, every site, everywhere) and generate addresses in the form that that site likes. That's absurd. Much better is to have a standard, and have everyone comply with that. If that means that some sites have to upgrade their software, then that's just the way it is. Reconcile yourself to this. Robert Elz postmaster@munnari.oz
avolio@decuac.DEC.COM (Frederick M. Avolio) (12/04/86)
In article <621@cullvax.UUCP>, news@cullvax.UUCP (Mail and USENET News System maintenance account) writes: > We are a UUCP site that is fed by an ARPA site. Incoming ARPA > messages used to come to us with headers saying things like > > From: arpa-feed!user@arpa.site > > which worked fine--one could reply to it, etc. Recently this has > changed (the "arpa-feed!" part isn't added), so return addresses have > to be composed manually. > .... Am I being unreasonable? I too think you are ... well, not unreasonable... But I think the ARPA site is correct. Soo, maybe you are uninformed? See, you say parse "host!user@other" as Send to "host" for "user@other". I say it says "send to "other" for "host!user". Not all hosts, uucp or otherwise, add a "host!" to the beginning of the From: line. The From_ may be changed that way. It is not such a big deal to request that mail standards are adhered to. There are no "uucp" mail standards except as defined in the Internet stndards. In any event, the code exists for upgrading your mailer to a smart mailer. "Smail" was posted to mod.sources a while back and will take care of your problems. Pick it up... Fred
jc@piaget.UUCP (John Cornelius) (12/04/86)
In article <1353@munnari.oz> kre@munnari.oz (Robert Elz) writes: >In article <597@cullvax.UUCP>, news@cullvax.UUCP writes : >> Incoming ARPA messages used to come to us with headers saying things like >> From: arpa-feed!user@arpa.site >> which worked fine--one could reply to it, etc. Recently this has >> changed (the "arpa-feed!" part isn't added) >> .... >> It used to work and now it doesn't. Am I being unreasonable? > >Yes, I think you are. To do what you want properly, your feed site >would have to know the characteristics of every site it feeds (and really, >every site, everywhere) and generate addresses in the form that that >site likes. That's absurd. Much better is to have a standard, and >have everyone comply with that. > >If that means that some sites have to upgrade their software, then >that's just the way it is. Reconcile yourself to this. > >Robert Elz postmaster@munnari.oz While all that you claim may indeed be reasonable to you, please note that many of us do not have the option of implementing a mailer that is not supported by the equipment or software vendor. Even for those of us who do have access to sources and/or considerable support talent, there is considerable time and effort involved in converting from one standard to another. It is also the case that the learning curve is often flatter than we would wish. For the most part, the news system has provided transition tools wherever possible and I have considerable admiration for the manner in which updates and improvements have been handled. On the other hand, for a postmaster to tell a client that he should refer to Figure 1. seems to be out of character for the net in general and the postmaster function in particular. I would think that the postmaster would want to get the problem fixed as promptly as possible. It isn't so much that he should serve the client as it is that the problem is likely consume his time anyway. John Cornelius (...!sdcsvax!piaget!jc)
campbell@maynard.BSW.COM (Larry Campbell) (12/06/86)
In article <112@piaget.UUCP> jc@piaget.UUCP (John Cornelius, System Guru) writes: >While all that you claim may indeed be reasonable to you, please note >that many of us do not have the option of implementing a mailer that is >not supported by the equipment or software vendor. Even for those of us >who do have access to sources and/or considerable support talent, there is >considerable time and effort involved in converting from one standard to >another. It is also the case that the learning curve is often flatter than >we would wish. ... As Fred Avolio pointed out, the solution is readily available. The "smail" package, recently posted to mod.sources, is an upward-compatible uucp mailer replacement that does All The Right Things. I don't think it's too much to ask a system administrator to install a free, working, easily available software package, when doing so helps bring us a tiny step closer to standardization in an area that sorely needs it. (Not to mention that the routing function smail provides is so big an improvement over vanilla uucp you'll wonder how you ever lived without it...) -- Larry Campbell The Boston Software Works, Inc. Internet: campbell@maynard.bsw.com 120 Fulton Street, Boston MA 02109 uucp: {alliant,wjh12}!maynard!campbell +1 617 367 6846 ARPA: campbell%maynard.uucp@harvisr.harvard.edu MCI: LCAMPBELL
johnsson@decwrl.DEC.COM (Richard Johnsson) (12/07/86)
Re: discussion of what should be in From: lines
The discussion has centered around UUCP mail (since that was the original
question). Another aspect of this question is what to do about domain
addresses in Internet mail that are only reachable by sites using MX records
from the domain servers.
There are over 12,000 machines in the DEC.COM domain. They all have MX
records in the DEC.COM domain servers, but most of them do not have Internet
addresses and cannot be reached by Internet sites whose software is not up
to the latest specs. Now, I have two choices when I gateway mail out to the
Internet. I can send addresses as
user@mumble.dec.com
which is "correct" but useless to more than half of the recipients, or I can
send
user%mumble.dec@decwrl.dec.com
which is a hack but is useable by (almost) everyone.
Being conservative in what we send, we choose the latter and do not insist
on our right to send the former just because it is "correct." Maybe in
another couple years we'll be able to "do it right." (Being liberal in what
we accept, we will take almost anything I can convince sendmail to make
sense of. :-)
I do sense a rising tide in favor of domain addresses in UUCP mail and we
may start doing that when the next round of sendmail.cf hacking strikes...
--
Richard Johnsson, DEC Western Software Lab, Palo Alto, CA
UUCP: {decvax,ucbvax}!decwrl!johnsson
ARPA: johnsson@decwrl.dec.com DEC ENet: rhea::johnsson
phone: +1 415 853 6676fair@ucbarpa.Berkeley.EDU (Erik E. Fair) (12/16/86)
W.R.T. Richard Johnsson's point about domainism in internet mail addresses, I wish to point out that while domainism is required on the ARPANET (and by this I mean network 10), it is not as yet required on MILNET (network 26) and so while you run a proper domain server with MX records and everything, you should continue to generate mail addresses with registered hosts on the right hand side of the atsign (and by "registered" I mean in the HOSTS.TXT file that comes from the NIC) until such time as the MILNET has been required to convert. After that, generate whatever your domain server will vouch for, and those MILNET and ARPANET sites that can't swallow it will have no excuse... formerly postmaster of lll-tis-b.arpa, Erik E. Fair ucbvax!fair fair@ucbarpa.berkeley.edu