Path: utzoo!censor!geac!torsqnt!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!att!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!cis.ohio-state.edu!karl_kleinpaste From: karl_kleinpaste@cis.ohio-state.edu Newsgroups: comp.mail.uucp Subject: Re: internet/uucp mail Message-ID: Date: 23 Nov 90 16:57:53 GMT References: <659186205.1594@proa.sv.dg.com> <100@marilyn.UUCP> Sender: news@tut.cis.ohio-state.edu Organization: Ohio State Computer Science Lines: 54 The old religious war begins again... shawn@marilyn.uucp writes: Indeed! Actually, I continually run into the following problem. A "From " line is not guaranteed to be an actual return path; rather, it's at best a transmittal route. ... Yet many messages I receive have "addr3!addr2!spam@addr1.com" or somesuch in the "From:" line, and most are missing a prepended site name from one of my neighbors, whether it's a full "!" path or not. I really don't want to get into the whole blasted argument again, but the short form is important. "addr3!addr2!spam@addr1.com" is a perfectly legitimate address. It is of a form that an Internet host would prefer to see. It can be translated into English as send to addr1.com, who should then send via UUCP (presumed, that is) to addr3, who should then send via UUCP to addr2, who will deliver to user "spam," who lives there on addr2. It's quite unambiguous. Any Internet site can deal with it without so much as a heart flutter. Any UUCP site with a modern mailer (smail 2.5 is more than sufficient) can deal with it just as easily. If you're running a system with a Seriously Stupid Mailer (SSM), e.g., all you've got is /bin/mail as a transport, and mailx calls it directly, then you shouldn't be set up to be replying to From: or Reply-To: lines in the first place. Such SSM configurations can only be depended upon to understand the UNIX From_ line. The From_ line will almost certainly contain nothing but a pure !-path, and in the case of your example above, it will probably look something like From your-uucp-relay-host!addr1.com!addr3!addr2!spam or some minor variation on that theme. Your SSM can reply to that just fine. Blind prepending of intermediate sitenames in the From: line is widely viewed as bogus behavior. Site prepending belongs in the From_ line where SSMs need it, and no one else needs to bother with it. No, a From: line is not at all guaranteed to be a return path, and it was never intended as such. Nor should it be a transmittal route. It should be an _address_, that is, an indication of _who_ you're trying to reach, not _how_ you're trying to reach them. The old analogy that applies is that of sending snail mail to someone across the country or around the world. It is unreasonable and insulting to expect the writer of a letter to have to provide indications to the postal system workforce for how to get mail from Hither to Yon. The writer just puts it in the mail and expects it to get there. Similar thoughts apply to mail in this environment; a From: should indicate to a recipient who you are, and not how a mail carrier finds your street and puts mail in your mailbox. --karl