stealth@CAEN.ENGIN.UMICH.EDU (Mike Pelletier) (11/02/90)
> ------- Forwarded Message > From: krowitz@richter.mit.edu > To: apollo@umix.cc.umich.edu > Subject: mailing address info > > I'm seeing a lot of messages to the mailing list that are being routed via > various HP corporate machines *without* fully qualified host names. (eg. > "news%caen%sdd.hp.com.uucp@ucsd.edu" is one of the latest). In many cases, > it is impossible to reply to the author of the message, as the HP machine > through which the message was routed does *not* know the unqualified host > name (in this example, the mailer daemon on sdd.hp.com has complained that > "caen" is an unknown host). I am the administrator of Usenet site "caen". The address you note was improperly generated from the Path: line of a Usenet article, instead of the From: line. The Path: line is a news specific device used to optimize newsfeeds, and has no relationship to a proper or useful UUCP mail path, even though it does use bangs for punctuation. I have a NNTP link with sdd.hp.com, but I do *not* have a UUCP mail link, which is what the address was expecting. The address you mention was quite properly rejected, as it's not valid. sdd.hp.com.*UUCP*?? Using the path line of an article may have worked most of the time back in the days before NNTP, since news neighbors were usually UUCP mail neighbors as well, but now it's quite common for two sites to exchange news but not mail, and thus the programs who use the Path: line to generate mail addresses are busy doing improper addresses. > If you are at a site which must forward your outgoing mail via another machine > (or machines!), please try sending yourself a test message to check if the > return address is getting fully qualified hostnames put in it. If not, please > bug your system admin about fixing your sendmail.cf file and/or adding the > short (ie. not fully qualified) versions of your hostnames into their local > routing tables. That's not a decent solution -- do you want to put all the permutations of news neighbors into your routing tables? The solution is to fix the software that's using Usenet path lines to generate mail addresses. > Dave Krowitz