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From: isaac@mungunni.OZ (Isaac Balbin)
Newsgroups: net.mail
Subject: Re: Standardising the "postmaster" concept
Message-ID: <428@mungunni.OZ>
Date: Mon, 9-Sep-85 19:14:19 EDT
Article-I.D.: mungunni.428
Posted: Mon Sep  9 19:14:19 1985
Date-Received: Thu, 12-Sep-85 08:49:41 EDT
References: <426@mungunni.OZ> <82@l5.uucp>
Reply-To: isaac@mungunni.UUCP (Isaac Balbin)
Organization: Machine Intelligence Proj, CompSci, Melbourne Uni
Lines: 27

In article <82@l5.uucp> gnu@l5.uucp (John Gilmore) writes:
! In article <426@mungunni.OZ>, isaac@mungunni.OZ (Isaac Balbin) writes:
! > I wonder if there is sufficient support for organising a standard user
! > like the existing "postmaster" on some Unix Systems, which will enable people 
! > to find out the login id of others.
! For VM/370 systems [BITNET], the equivalent of "root" is "operator".  You
! could try mailing to there.
!  
Thanks for your advice, but it only serves to show how disorganised things are.
A previous news item <10298@ucbvax.ARPA> from Erik Fair quotes reliable sources
as saying they have standardised to POSTMAST!
I don't really care *how* (viz sendmail) one achieves the aliasing - the point
is that there is no uniform way (in practice) as yet to address the 
"postmaster" on any machine. There should be; and everyone should conform.
Can/Will it happen? Will everyone keep RFC822 religiously?

! >                                                 Can ... a "notification"
! > option exist so that one realises that the only reason no reply has been 
! > received is that the receipient is away or uninterested or trying to avoid
! > answering you! 
! This exists for sites running sendmail or other Arpa-compatible mailers.
! Add a header line "Return-receipt-to: XXX" where XXX is your address,
! *relative to the receiving site*.  In other words, it's the address your
! friend would have to send to, to get the message to you.
Thats nice to know. Is there any chance for this to be standardised too?
					Isaac Balbin
					munnari!isaac@seismo.ARPA