Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!rutgers!ames!sdcsvax!ncr-sd!matt From: matt@ncr-sd.SanDiego.NCR.COM (Matt Costello) Newsgroups: comp.mail.uucp Subject: Re: domains Summary: tundra.uucp is broke Message-ID: <1984@ncr-sd.SanDiego.NCR.COM> Date: 15 Jan 88 03:48:30 GMT References: <2987@hall.cray.com> Reply-To: matt@ncr-sd.SanDiego.NCR.COM (Matt Costello) Organization: NCR Corporation, Rancho Bernardo Lines: 52 In article <2987@hall.cray.com> dwd@hall.cray.com (Dave DeHerder_Jr.) writes: >WELL... I got some mail with a from that looked like: >"From: texsun!sun!hplabs!hp-sdd!sdcsvax!ncr-sd!onion.SanDiego.NCR.COM!bethh@tundra.UUCP" As Postmaster of ncr-sd.UUCP and SanDiego.NCR.COM I can explain what probably happened. The From: header line was added by tundra.UUCP as none was previously present. The system onion is running stock V.2 with mailx as the user agent, and mailx does not generate a From: header line. Tundra is probably running sendmail (it's a Sun) and the stock sendmail configuration file tends to do things like create very ugly From: and To: headers when none are previously present. The return path should have been tundra!texsun!sun!hplabs!hp-sdd!sdcsvax!ncr-sd!onion.SanDiego.NCR.COM!bethh so it doesn't end up a mixed-mode path. Remember that '@' normally has precedence over '!' when parsing addresses, except that many UUCP sites ignore '@' completely. >First it is confusing because all the sites are in order except that >"tundra.UUCP" is our nearest neighbor. Why that is at the end is a >mystery to me. OK. So I figure that this is just a foible of the >conventions and try to create a return path and come up with: >"To: tundra!texsun!sun!hplabs!hp-sdd!sdcsvax!ncr-sd!bethh@onion.SanDiego.NCR.COM" The tundra.UUCP is at the end because the '@' has higher precedence. The new form is wrong since if everybody worked right (which they won't) the address passed to onion would be tundra!texsun!...!ncr-sd!beth which would fail since onion does not communicate with tundra. >This mail gets bounced back to me with: >"554 texsun!sun!hplabs!hp-sdd!sdcsvax!ncr-sd!bethh@onion.SanDiego.NCR.COM... Unknown domain COM" > >I also tried bethh@onion.ncr.com thinking that upper case was >causing me difficulties (well it worked on other stuff). No >dice. Bounced with the same message. > >Can anyone tell me what the problem is? Any domain server that does not know about the COM domain is very broken. It is a requirement of EVERY domain server that it know all the top-level domains. In actuality lots of machines just pass unknown top-level domains off to a smarter neighbor, but the end affect is still the same. You should inform the postmaster of the machine the rejection came from that COM was unknown and that they had better fix it. From the remaining path it looks like the problem was at tundra.UUCP, which figures ... -- Matt Costello +1 619 485 2926 {sdcsvax,cbosgd,pyramid,nosc.ARPA}!ncr-sd!matt