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From: ylee@csl.dl.nec.com (Ying-Da Lee)
Newsgroups: comp.mail.sendmail
Subject: Idempotence of S3 (Was Re: IBM Do It Again)
Message-ID: <1991Apr12.192026.11296@csl.dl.nec.com>
Date: 12 Apr 91 19:20:26 GMT
References: <1991Apr12.145344.7135@csl.dl.nec.com> <1991Apr12.155948.29233@mp.cs.niu.edu> <1991Apr12.164151.8459@csl.dl.nec.com>
Organization: NEC America, C & C Software Development Lab
Lines: 31

(Sorry to be so decadent as to follow up on my own posting; I kept
forgetting one important point.)

(Neil)>> I do not know of anything in sendmail that requires S3 be idempotent.

(Me)>That's my point.  It bothers me to see bold assertion that
(Me)>'S3 is supposed to be idempotent' without supporting evidence.
(Me)>I have seen no such requirement either in documentation or in
(Me)>actual practice.

If S3 is supposed to be idempotent, let's make sure it is so.
If not, then the practice of an unconditional invocation of S3
at the beginning of S0 'just to be safe' can land you in deep
water instead.


	Ying-Da Lee			(214)518-3490
	C&C Software Development Lab
	NEC America			(214)518-3990 (FAX)
	ylee@csl.dl.nec.com
	uunet!necbsd!ylee


P.S.
Just out of curiosity, how many people do have idempotent S3?
To find out, start your sendmail with -bt, then enter

3 some@mail.address

If you have an idempotent S3, the two output lines marked with
'ruleset 3 returns:' will be identical.