Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!clyde!uunet!mailrus!ncar!woods
From: woods@ncar.ucar.edu (Greg Woods)
Newsgroups: comp.mail.sendmail
Subject: Dealing with Subdomains
Message-ID: <5565@ncar.ucar.edu>
Date: 5 Dec 89 21:53:13 GMT
Reply-To: woods@ncar.UCAR.EDU (Greg Woods)
Organization: Scientific Computing Division/NCAR, Boulder CO
Lines: 34

We are about to split our domain up into subdomains, and I am trying to make
the necessary changes in the sendmail configuration to account for this. In
particular, I want to make it unnecessary for users in one subdomain to
fully qualify every name when sending mail to a host in a different subdomain.
I'd like it to work the way all the other applications (e.g. telnet, ftp,
rlogin) do. I can say

telnet host.sub

(i.e. as opposed to telnet host.sub.ucar.edu) and the resolver happily finds
the right host. So I would like to also be able to send mail to user@host.sub
and have it work. By adding this rule in ruleset 3

R$+<@$+>$*	$1<@$[$2$]>$3

the mail will get there. The problem is that the To: line still reads like
To: user@host.sub (i.e., it doesn't get properly canonicalized). This is all
well and good unless a message is sent with this kind of address and is also
sent to someone outside our domain. If that outside person tries to reply
to all recipients, the original user@host.sub cannot be resolved and the 
message bounces. What I *really* don't understand about this is that if
I run sendmail in address test mode, and pass it through rulesets 2,R,4
(which are supposed to process the To: line), it DOES get properly changed
into user@host.sub.ucar.edu since ruleset 3 is always called first.

Summary: with a name server lookup in ruleset 3, the envelope sender is 
properly resolved. In address test mode, using the rulesets which supposedly
process the To: line, it is properly resolved. However in practice when I
actually send mail, the To: line is left unresolved.

Anybody have any idea what I am missing or overlooking? I've been working on
this for several days and have not been able to solve this problem.

--Greg