Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!wuarchive!cs.utexas.edu!romp!auschs!awdprime!sandino.austin.ibm.com!jeffe
From: jeffe@sandino.austin.ibm.com (Peter Jeffe 512.823.4091)
Newsgroups: comp.mail.misc
Subject: Re: Mail problems on 3B2/310
Message-ID: <3087@awdprime.UUCP>
Date: 8 Aug 90 18:12:03 GMT
References: <11967@hydra.gatech.EDU>
Sender: news@awdprime.UUCP
Distribution: na
Organization: IBM AWD, Austin, TX
Lines: 28

In article <11967@hydra.gatech.EDU> jkg@prism.gatech.EDU (Jim Greenlee) writes:
>The problem is that I'm getting extra "From " lines at the beginning of
>mail messages that originate from other machines (we get all our mail via
>TCP connections). In all cases, the original "From " line is escaped out 
>with ">", and a "From root" line is prepended at the start of the message. 
>This causes problems when you try to Reply, because it gets sent to root 
>rather to where it ought to go.
>...We use /bin/mailx for sending and reading mail...

/bin/mail escapes existing From_ lines with the '>', and adds its own;
unfortunately, when invoked by sendmail in daemon mode, it thinks that the
sender is root (or whatever the u option is set to if your mailer doesn't
have its S flag set).  In BSD's /bin/mail, the -r flag allows sendmail to
specify the real sender (e.g. "-r $g"), but there's no way to change this
in SVR2.1; maybe the later versions have added such a flag.

The From_ line shouldn't matter to mailx if it is configured to look first
for an rfc-822-style From: line, which should be there from sendmail. In
the SVR2.1 source, in file aux.c, function name1(), this check is #ifdef
DELIVERMAIL'ed, so maybe you need to define this to enable it.  I would
imagine, however, that this is the default behavior.

If this doesn't help, include a copy of an unreplyable message, since your
problem may lie in another aspect of the message.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Peter Jeffe   ...uunet!cs.utexas.edu!ibmaus!auschs!sandino.austin.ibm.com!jeffe
        first they want a disclaimer, then they make you pee in a jar,
                   then they come for you in the night