nancy@b11.ingr.com (Nancy Buehmann) (10/11/89)
My sendmail program has problems dealing with addresses that have a group list syntax. A user at my site is on a distribution list that has a group list syntax of the form "listname:;@host.domain". Messages sent to this list are delivered to this user, but then sendmail sends back an "Unable to deliver mail" error message back to the originator. After reading (and being confused by) Section 6.2.6 in RFC 822, I thought that group lists could only have the form "listname:[mailbox];". Thus, I don't understand the "@host.domain" part of the list name given above. Sendmail's test mode shows that addresses like "a:b;", "a:b;@c", "a:;@c", and "a:;" all resolve to a mailer okay. The user's address in the distribution list is correct. This user is also on other distribution lists that have the form "listname@host.domain". Messages sent to these lists are delivered to him okay, and no error messages are generated. The man page mailaddr(7) says that only the form "list:;" is supported. To me, this implies that only this form is supported regardless of how the sendmail.cf file is hacked up. Any revelations on how to handle these group list names? -------------------------- -- Nancy Buehmann UUCP: ...!uunet!ingr!b11!nancy Intergraph Corporation ARPANET: ingr!b11!nancy@uunet.uu.net Huntsville, Alabama
fletcher@cs.utexas.edu (Fletcher Mattox) (10/14/89)
In article <6166@b11.ingr.com> nancy@b11.ingr.com (Nancy Buehmann) writes: >My sendmail program has problems dealing with addresses that have a group >list syntax. A user at my site is on a distribution list that has a group >list syntax of the form "listname:;@host.domain". Messages sent to this >list are delivered to this user, but then sendmail sends back an "Unable >to deliver mail" error message back to the originator. > >After reading (and being confused by) Section 6.2.6 in RFC 822, I thought >that group lists could only have the form "listname:[mailbox];". Thus, >I don't understand the "@host.domain" part of the list name given above. Do you, by chance, have the C flag specified in your mailer definition? That's the flag which appends "@host.domain" to an address when sendmail thinks it has received a non-FQDN from the sender. I'll bet the address arrived at your host (or perhaps an intermediate sendmail host which uses the C flag) with a To: listname:; in the headers. The problem is that sendmail uses a quick heuristic, instead of a real 822 parser, to determine when to append the "@host.domain": If there is no @ in the address, sendmail appends. I've removed the C flag in my mailer definitions until I get a chance to fix sendmail (a quick fix to handle group lists is trivial). >Sendmail's test mode shows that addresses like "a:b;", "a:b;@c", "a:;@c", >and "a:;" all resolve to a mailer okay. The user's address in the >distribution list is correct. Sendmail -bt will not show the effects of the C flag, if memory serves me. Fletcher