paul@vixie.UUCP (05/15/87)
Since I've already come out for leaving the From: line alone, it won't surprise anyone that I totally disapprove of adding .UUCP to an address. My own domain name is currently vixie.UUCP, because I'm in between installing smail and registering the domain. .UUCP is "used for testing only"... (giggle) I'd previously said that a host shouldn't use .UUCP because sendmail.cf's often use it as a mock domain (instead of the newer ".UUX"). This is true, but misleading. You shouldn't use .UUCP because it is not a registered domain -- there is no "authoritative site" for it, no domain administrator, no MX records, no nothing. The UUCP domain is being split (has been split) into the .COM, .EDU, .ORG, etc. domains. There is no .UUCP domain. In <771@mcgill-vision.UUCP> (ugh), Der Mouse says: >Something that seems to be getting commoner is interpretation of >foo.bar!user as meaning the same thing as user@foo.bar - the .uucp gets >added only if there are no dots in the "host" part. This allows two >intelligent hosts to speak to one another using a dumb !-only host as >their link. I think he may be confused. Some sendmail.cf files will use a .UUCP or .UUX internally to mark an address which either came from or is destined for a UUCP-linked neighbor. The .UUCP (.UUX) should be stripped off before the mail is actually queued. In practice, this is often not done; thus many sendmail.cf's will strip it off of incoming mail, hopefully before adding their own magic cookies to it. >What I shudder to see are things like netnews postings with messes like > >From: user@host.dept.univ.edu.UUCP Since the news software is older than the UUCP domain breakup, I can't really blame it for adding ".UUCP" to addresses without "."'s in them. Since they do this, the above address is not likely to be seen. What news software OUGHT to do is just leave the darned addresses alone, with provision for the news admin to force their full domain name to be added instead of just their host or UUCP name. Mail software, same policy: don't add .UUCP to anything leaving your machine. ("Smail test-mode sites excepted, of course," said paul@vixie.UUCP) -- Paul A. Vixie {ptsfa, crash, winfree}!vixie!paul 329 Noe Street dual!ptsfa!vixie!paul@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU San Francisco CA 94116 paul@vixie.UUCP (415) 864-7013