Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!sdd.hp.com!decwrl!uunet!wang!fitz From: fitz@wang.com (Tom Fitzgerald) Newsgroups: comp.mail.uucp Subject: Re: Imminent death of UUCP Zone predicted Message-ID: Date: 24 Jul 90 01:42:28 GMT References: <100@raysnec.UUCP> <269B82AE.415E@intercon.com> <707@logicon.com> <1990Jul16.200955.29906@chinet.chi.il.us> <712@logicon.com> <721@logicon.com> Organization: Wang Labs, Lowell MA, USA Lines: 51 > In article fitz@wang.com (Tom Fitzgerald) writes: >> If valid RFC822 addresses weren't rewritten into ! addresses in the first >> place, this wouldn't be a problem. > [...] >> And the fact remains that not all sites prefix the path with their >> nodename. Makey@Logicon.COM (Jeff Makey) writes: > The one problem you fail to take into account is the sites (and there > are plenty of them) that rewrite > From: user@fully.qualified.domain > into the completely wrong form of > From: bozo-site!user@fully.qualified.domain Yup, this is trashed. > when I ship such mail out via UUCP with > From: snoopy!fully.qualified.domain!user > I can sleep well knowing that I am immune from such lunacy. This is better in the short run, but will still cause problems in the long run. If the mail is due to go a few more hops before it reaches its final destination, there's a fair chance that some of the intermediate hops are going to prepend their node names to the path; some are going to forget to; one may decide to gate it onto the Internet rewritten as: > From: user%fully.qualified.domain%snoopy@gateway.site The next may gate it off the Internet as: > From: gateway.site!user%fully.qualified.domain%snoopy and after a while it will be rewritten beyond recognition. I've gotten things like this more often than I want to think about. I think the moral of this is: "Changing RFC822 conformant headers to be nonconformant always does more harm than good." > While I > currently do this for all UUCP traffic, I am beginning to be convinced > that I should only do this if bozo-site is the next UUCP hop. This would be better. If you have identified such bozosites, it might be even better to start a (polite) mail campaign, getting a whole lot of people to write to them (politely) asking them to knock it off, rather than trying to compensate for one problem with a lesser problem. Your solution will make it look like your site is responsible for the failed mail, instead of the real bozosites you're covering for. --- Tom Fitzgerald Wang Labs fitz@wang.com 1-508-967-5278 Lowell MA, USA ...!uunet!wang!fitz