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From: OWENSJ%VTVM1.BITNET@MITVMA.MIT.EDU (John Owens)
Newsgroups: comp.mail.headers
Subject: Re: bad addresses from uucp
Message-ID: <10378@brl-adm.ARPA>
Date: Mon, 16-Nov-87 14:48:35 EST
Article-I.D.: brl-adm.10378
Posted: Mon Nov 16 14:48:35 1987
Date-Received: Wed, 18-Nov-87 06:20:58 EST
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>However, many (most?) of the intermediate sites are also on
>the arpanet, and take @ at higher presidence than ! when routing
>mail.  The mail gets to my site, but the address is not correct
>(contians multiple !) and gets rejected.
> . . .
>Here is an example header:  (The @ and % are reversed in the original
>To: address, but I've got others without that problem.)

The problem in this case is that while there are ways to handle
@-form addresses over UUCP (mail to R.LARSON@FNS1.USC.EDU, if that were
a valid address, would be sent via
        rmail sun!lll-lcc!rutgers!cit-vax!oberon!fns1.usc.edu!r.larson
and there would be no problem with it arriving (although what the headers
would look like when it got there....)), there's not yet a good way to
handle mixed %-@ addresses (or route-addrs).  R.LARSON%FNS1@ECLA.USC.EDU
would become
        rmail sun!lll-lcc!rutgers!cit-vax!oberon!ecla.usc.edu!r.larson%fns1
and while there are rules about !-vs-@ (@ takes precedence), there are no
rules about !-vs-%.  If anyone along the way gives the % precendence, it's
lost.  With the @-% switch in the message you gave, it gets even worse.  I
can't tell whether the original user typed in like that or perhaps typed
multiple @-signs or something, but since the path was still in the envelope
recipient, complete with its first part, sun, we can tell that the rmail
command passed from portal to sun ended in either @ecla.usc.edu or
%ecla.usc.edu, causing sun to send it via SMTP, never stripping anything
off of the path, *and never sending it through any intermediate sites*.
(If it had, those parts of the path would have been successively stripped
off of the rmail line.)  The fix here would have to be in portal's handling
of %'s and @'s....

        -John Owens
        Virginia Tech Communications Network Services
        OWENSJ@VTVM1.BITNET    owens@vtopus.cs.vt.edu
        +1 703 961 7827               john@xanth.UUCP