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From: bandy@lll-lcc.UUcp (Andrew Scott Beals)
Newsgroups: net.mail.headers
Subject: sendmail chops addresses (was: Erik the Fair on loop control)
Message-ID: <163@lll-lcc.UUcp>
Date: Mon, 24-Feb-86 16:11:22 EST
Article-I.D.: lll-lcc.163
Posted: Mon Feb 24 16:11:22 1986
Date-Received: Wed, 26-Feb-86 20:24:18 EST
References: <1095@brl-smoke.ARPA> <11992@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU>
Reply-To: bandy@lll-lcc.UUCP (Andrew Scott Beals)
Organization: Lab Comp Center, Lawrence Livermore Labs
Lines: 29
Keywords: MAXATOM
Summary: sendmail as distributed chops addresses

In article <11992@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU> fair@ucbarpa.berkeley.edu.BERKELEY.EDU (Erik E. &) writes:
>There have been some misconceptions and I have a point to add:

And a point of information that I would like to clear. (You really
should get someone to fix rrn, Erik)

>1. sendmail does loop detection by counting Received: headers,
>	WITH ITS OWN HOSTNAME IN THEM. After 30 such lines (i.e.
>	thirty times through this host), the letter gets mailed
>	to postmaster. It does not arbitrarily throw away letters
>	that have passed through 30 hosts.

As distributed, MAXATOM (in src/conf.h) is set to 100. This is the
allowable number of tokens in an address. "eric@berkeley" is three
atoms.

Addresses longer than MAXATOM will get truncated. This usually
creates addresses that look like:
	one!and!another!hop!thru!bel!tel!land!before!we!reach!ihnp4!

With the address getting chopped off somewhere in the middle. Sigh.
Unfortunately, this also seems to be the way that sendmail is
distributed with other systems (Pyramid).
-- 
I'm PROUD to be a CARBON-BASED lifeform!

andy beals
bandy@lll-crg.arpa	{ihnp4,seismo,qantel,sun}!lll-crg!bandy
LLNL, P.O. Box 808, L-419, Livermore CA 94550 (415) 423-1948