Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!usc!samsung!uakari.primate.wisc.edu!caen!ox.com!tbomb.ice.com!time From: time@tbomb.ice.com (Tim Endres) Newsgroups: comp.mail.misc Subject: Re: Which headers may Sendmail re-write? Summary: time@tbomb.ice.com's message of 5 Dec 90 11:57:58 GMT Message-ID: <1CE00001.914g2o@tbomb.ice.com> Date: 7 Dec 90 20:58:14 GMT Reply-To: barnett@crdgw1.ge.com Organization: ICE Engineering, Inc. Lines: 47 X-Mailer: uAccess - Mac Release: 1.0.3 In article , barnett@grymoire.crd.ge.com (Bruce Barnett) writes: > The reason sendmail does this is because it is necessary. > Not all addresses that come into our machine are valid. > Not all are fully qualified domain names, or RFC822 addresses. > > The addresses > > user@machine > or > user@machine.UUCP > > are not valid Internet addresses. If I deliver mail to another internet > site, it must be replyable. The above addresses are NOT. Reply-able? By what? If it is the user agent that incorrectly builds the reply address, then it is a bug in the user agent, and should be corrected by aliases or code fixes/extensions. If it is sendmail itself, the "envelope" that sendmail uses is sufficient to allow for reply (bounce?). Further, RFC822 allows for header extensions, with which sendmail could include any type of specification it desired, while retaining the integrity of the original header. > If we get such an address, and we send it to another internet site, we > MUST convert it into the form: > machine!user@crdgw1.ge.com This conversion can be done, and the delivery completed, without the modification of the mail's header. Do it in the sendmail "talk". If the conversion needs to be > To do anything else would be wrong. Or inconvenient? I do not profess to be an internet mail expert, I am not. I have simply always thought that the problems sendmial is "solving" could be solved while still observing the "do not touch the letter contents" rule. tim. ------------------------------------------------------------- Tim Endres | time@ice.com ICE Engineering | uupsi!ice.com!time 8840 Main Street | Whitmore Lake MI. 48189 | (313) 449 8288