cak@Purdue.ARPA (12/14/83)
From: Christopher A Kent <cak@Purdue.ARPA> Description: Program aliases in sendmail get converted to all lower case before the exec() call, apparently by the same code that converts all the recipients to lower case (this is also a bad deal if you have mixed case login ids). Repeat-By: Build a program alias with mixed case. I have a private "vacation" program, so I changed my .forward to be \cak "| /usr/cak/Mail/Recmail" When I sent a letter to test it, I got back From: Mail Delivery Subsystem <MAILER-DAEMON> Subject: Returned mail: unknown mailer error 1 To: cak Date: 14 Dec 1983 1041-EST (Wednesday) ----- Transcript of session follows ----- /usr/cak/mail/recmail: Command not found. 554 "| /usr/cak/Mail/Recmail"... unknown mailer error 1 ----- Unsent message follows ----- ----------
Lepreau@UTAH-20.ARPA (12/15/83)
From: Jay Lepreau <Lepreau@UTAH-20.ARPA> If you don't want case folding of "usernames" there's a per-mailer config flag that controls it-- the "u" flag. Just add it your local and prog mailer lines. There's also an analagous flag for host names. However, I now think it's a lossage to do that-- as a minor problem, remember that "postmaster" must be case-independent? More importantly, lots of mail will get returned because non-unix people just can't seem to avoid capitalizing names. We preserved case here, cause we had some mixed case usernames, until I perused the logs and noticed a lot getting returned. Also, this is still a bug of sorts, as you would like to be able to mail to files and programs while still folding real usernames. And indeed, the READ_ME file in the sendmail source dir so documents it as one of the three outstanding "major problems." -------
daemon@decwrl.UUCP (12/21/83)
From: ultra::herbison I hacked the 4.1 mail system at Yale to go through a two stage process: it would try to send mail with the case specified and then convert the text to lower case and try again if that failed. It should be easy yo apply the same hack to program aliases. B.J.