Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!wang!fitz From: fitz@wang.com (Tom Fitzgerald) Newsgroups: comp.mail.misc Subject: Re: is uunet breaking your headers? Message-ID: Date: 1 Jun 90 01:43:47 GMT References: <8955@gouda.quad.com> <13952@ucsd.Edu> <2752.26638923@mccall.com> Organization: Wang Labs, Lowell MA, USA Lines: 59 > In article <13952@ucsd.Edu>, brian@ucsd.Edu (Brian Kantor) writes: >> Some uucp hosts, particularly those running sendmail, WILL update the >> RFC822 "From: " line. Others don't, which means that the From: line >> is of questionable integrity if the mail has ever passed through a uucp >> link. tp@mccall.com writes: > The sendmail sites (and anyone foolish enough to emulate them) are wrong. > Headers shouldn't be modified! This is according to RFC822. Headers shouldn't be modified IF they are already compliant with RFC822. The headers that aren't (especially From: lines with no @ in them) aren't constrained at all. There's a good justification for putting "myname!" at the beginning of such lines, or tacking "@my.domain" onto the end. There's nothing in RFC822 that specifies what to do to messages that already violate it. > I get unuseable > From: lines because my neighboring site is a sendmail site. That's a little overgeneralized, there are sendmail sites that don't rewrite. > uucp does require paths. uucp also doesn't have the vaguest idea what a > header line is. Even the "From " line is only so mailers can attempt to > generate reply addresses. The path is the ENVELOPE of the message. Header > info is NOT used for delivery. This is only true for dumb UUCP sites. There are also smart UUCP sites around, even smart UUCP sites that don't have a registered domain. We have to take these people into account too. They can't use "From: user@domain" because they don't have a domain (not everyone can handle the .UUCP domain), and if they don't put in a From: line at all, a recipient on a smart site won't be able to reply. > Many uucp hops of > a message are typically sendmail sites, and they all do this kind of > munging, leading to real confusion. Absolutely. I've seen some really incredible specimans pass through here (I wish I'd saved them for this discussion). > smail > 2.whatever works as I have described (I used to run a unix machine). Not quite, smail 2.5 will put "myname!" at the beginning of From: lines that don't already have a @ in them. I think this is the right thing to do for something that's going out over UUCP anyway, since the final destination may be a smart UUCP site that wants to see a usable From: line. I think your arguments are generally right except that non-RFC822 headers sometimes have to be munged anyway. If nothing else, they have to be made RFC822-compliant if the message is being gated onto the Internet, and they have to be kept usable for receiving UUCP sites. --- Tom Fitzgerald Wang Labs fitz@wang.com 1-508-967-5278 Lowell MA, USA ...!uunet!wang!fitz