Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Path: utzoo!mnetor!seismo!rutgers!sri-unix!hplabs!hpcea!hpfcdc!hpfclp!diamant From: diamant@hpfclp.HP.COM (John Diamant) Newsgroups: comp.mail.uucp Subject: Re: In defense of sendmail Message-ID: <7270001@hpfclp.HP.COM> Date: Sun, 18-Jan-87 16:14:51 EST Article-I.D.: hpfclp.7270001 Posted: Sun Jan 18 16:14:51 1987 Date-Received: Wed, 21-Jan-87 00:22:10 EST References: <16890@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU> Organization: HP, Fort Collins Lines: 84 > / jordan@ucbarpa.Berkeley.EDU (Jordan Hayes) / 12:12 pm Jan 16, 1987 / > Well, I think it's time once again to quell these nasties flying around > about what sendmail is and isn't; what it can do and what it can't. > Frankly, I'm kind of sick of seeing mis- or ill- informed people > passing on incorrect information and perpetuating a lack of > understanding. To wit, > > Terry Poot writes: > > If I had one that properly handled standard syntax, it'd still > mess up, because some sendmail site somewhere scribbled on the > From: line. > > Notice the attack on "sendmail" rather than "novice sendmail > maintainer" ...? Just because sendmail is "hard" to understand and use > correctly doesn't mean that the program is responsible for some > haphazard site running a config file that is destroying headers beyond > usability. ... > > The reason I haven't installed sendmail is that I hear that the > munging of From: lines is unfixable without changing the > program (NOT the sendmail.cf). > > "I hear" ... hmmm ... the From: line is directly managed with the > configuration file ... you "heard" wrong. The major problems people > run into with sendmail deal with their undertstanding of which rulesets > get called where, and what to do about being a gateway site. Jordan, this is wrong. While it is true that you can make the From: line say anything you want, in the version of sendmail in 4.2BSD (the one our version is based on), the From_ line for UUCP and the From: line are derived from the same ruleset. Thus, if you are a UUCP and SMTP site, you have NO CHOICE but to munge one or the other header unless you use something like smail to fix what sendmail broke in the header. It is a mistaken assumption on sendmail's part that a From_ line is equivalent to a From: line (see RFC 976 for details). RFC 976 should be implementable with just sendmail, but it is not because of this problem. If you gateway mail from SMTP into UUCP, you MUST put your sitename on the From_ line, and you must NOT put it in the From: line. In fact, if you don't put your site (followed by "!") at the beginning of the address, sendmail will complain, because it cannot construct the >From (in particular, the "remote from" part). So you see, if you gateway from SMTP into UUCP using sendmail (without smail), you don't have any choice! The correct solution is a change to the sendmail source code -- namely the a separate ruleset must be made available for "ugly" From_ lines. > > If sendmail can't be made to follow the standards, why doesn't > someone fix it, or write something better. > > This is really classic stuff. Sendmail has the ability to follow more > standards (and has been made to do so) than anything I've ever seen. > Sendmail is still being worked on faithfully, and was written with the > expressed purpose of addressing (no pun intended) the needs of an > ever-changing standards-crazy Internetwork world. One need that it > really overlooked was that of a small UUCP-only site. This need has, I > think, been addressed (or at least are begining to be addressed) by > smail. As with all large software projects, there ae objections all > around, but it certainly can "do what you want it to do" in the same > way sendmail can do what I want it to. > > /jordan Don't get me wrong -- I think sendmail is a tremendous improvement over what can be done without it, but that doesn't make it above reproach. In fact, there were many good decisions made in the design of sendmail, and some bad ones. A couple bad ones that come to mind are: 1) That sendmail.cf was designed to be easy to parse by a computer, rather than by a person. With current parsing technology, it is almost trivial to make a readable format that would not have added much complexity to the sendmail code (using lex and yacc, for intance -- like Ease). 2) That ruleset bindings to headers should be configurable, or at least extensible without recompiling sendmail from source (since many people don't have source). John Diamant Systems Software Operation UUCP: {hplabs,hpfcla}!hpfclp!diamant Hewlett Packard Co. ARPA/CSNET: diamant%hpfclp@hplabs.HP.COM Fort Collins, CO