Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!swrinde!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!usc!ucsd!ucbvax!THUMPER.BELLCORE.COM!nsb From: nsb@THUMPER.BELLCORE.COM (Nathaniel Borenstein) Newsgroups: comp.soft-sys.andrew Subject: Re: handling messages with missing 'From:' lines Message-ID: Date: 28 Sep 90 15:14:56 GMT References: Sender: daemon@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU Organization: The Internet Lines: 27 Excerpts from internet.info-andrew: 27-Sep-90 handling messages with miss.. Bill Schell@allegra.temp (716) > A few of the mailers around here like to send out messages with valid > 'From' header lines, but with no 'From:' header line (note the absence > of a colon in the first case). When messages gets these, it lists the > sender as "". Does anyone else have this problem? I > believe that this is semi-typical in the UUCP world. How would one go > about making messages look at the 'From' line if the 'From:' line is > missing? I believe that this problem should go away completely with patch 7. I haven't yet installed patch 7, but it contains a patch that I sent in, which is a variant on a previous suggestion by Lennart Lovstrand. It will turn the UNIX "From " lines into valid RFC 822 "Return-path" headers. The main motivation for this fix was to allow re-sending of multimedia mail, which was broken when "From " lines were present and sendmail got its fingers in the pie. However, a side effect will be to fix your case, too, because "Return-path" is used as a last resort in building captions if there's no "From", "Resent-From", or "Sender" header. (See ams/libs/ms/prettyn.c for the whole algorithm.) Thus, although that wasn't the intent of the patch, I think it should be fixed with patch 7. How's that for service -- the latest patch fixed your bug before you reported it, and you were told about the fix before anyone from CMU had time to respond!