mp@andante.att.com (Mark Plotnick) (02/12/91)
The sendmail config files we inherited don't do much recipient address rewriting. One person has pointed out that when he sends mail like this: From: ps To: rb, bb@parc.xerox.com sendmail doesn't rewrite the To: lines at all (though it does rewrite the From: line to be ps@andante.att.com). If the person at Xerox wants to send a reply to the sender and to everyone in the To: list, his mailer can't resolve what "rb" should be. My question is: should we have sendmail rewrite To: lines so that they're always of the form user@host.domain? Is there a way to do so and still avoid obviously incorrect rewrites such as changing From: user@xxx.edu To: list into "To: list@andante.att.com" ? Or should it be the job of the mail composer to fill in the To: and Cc: lines correctly in the first place? Mark Plotnick mp@allegra.att.com
rickert@mp.cs.niu.edu (Neil Rickert) (02/12/91)
In article <49652@andante.att.com> mp@andante.att.com (Mark Plotnick) writes: >The sendmail config files we inherited don't do much recipient >address rewriting. One person has pointed out that when he >sends mail like this: > > From: ps > To: rb, bb@parc.xerox.com > >sendmail doesn't rewrite the To: lines at all (though it does >rewrite the From: line to be ps@andante.att.com). If the person >at Xerox wants to send a reply to the sender and to everyone in >the To: list, his mailer can't resolve what "rb" should be. Three things have gone wrong. 1. Your Mail User Agent has not put full domain names on the mail. This is very common, and not a real problem, unless you are of the school of thought which says the Mail Transport must not under any circumstances change headers. 2. Your Transport has failed to correct the headers to make sure that they valid domain addresses. 3. The receiving mail system has not followed the practice of appending '@sending.domain' to those header addresses without domains. The simple answer is YES. You should make sure mail does not leave 'sendmail' for another host without all header addresses being fully qualified. >My question is: should we have sendmail rewrite To: lines so >that they're always of the form user@host.domain? Is there a >way to do so and still avoid obviously incorrect rewrites such >as changing What do you mean by 'list'. If you mean the word 'list' which one presumes to be an alias entry for your local host, the answer is that it should add a domain in that case. If by list, you mean 'user1, user2, user3', you need not worry. Sendmail should be parsing this into separate addresses, and processing each address independently through the rewrite rules. It would then finish up as 'user1@your.domain, user2@your.domain, user3@your.domain'. -- =*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*= Neil W. Rickert, Computer Science <rickert@cs.niu.edu> Northern Illinois Univ. DeKalb, IL 60115 +1-815-753-6940