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Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!lll-winken!lll-tis!helios.ee.lbl.gov!pasteur!ames!ll-xn!mit-eddie!bbn!ulowell!page
From: page@swan.ulowell.edu (Bob Page)
Newsgroups: comp.mail.sendmail,comp.mail.uucp
Subject: route-addrs in UUCP paths?
Message-ID: <9742@swan.ulowell.edu>
Date: 20 Oct 88 17:54:16 GMT
Reply-To: page@swan.ulowell.edu (Bob Page)
Organization: University of Lowell, Computer Science Dept.
Lines: 84

I'm getting uucp mail from some hosts with From_ lines that have
route-addrs in them.  For example:
	From @MITVMA.MIT.EDU:user@host.BITNET remote from mit-eddie
Since the convention is to append the hostname to the From_ line,
when I pass that along (also via uucp) it looks like
	From mit-eddie!@MITVMA.MIT.EDU:user@host.BITNET remote from ulowell

This isn't just with mit-eddie, by the way.

Somehow at the destination this monster has made its way to the From:
line.  Any mailer that understands the '@' syntax (most of them) goes
bananas when it tries to deal with it.

Even if it doesn't get into the From: line, if it bounces, sendmail
uses the address in the envelope.  Suppose a message is going to
ulowell!bounce, who doesn't exist.  My sendmail bounces it to an
address like:

	mit-eddie!MITVMS.MIT.EDU!host.BITNET!:user

That is, it takes the user@host and tries to flip it to host!user
so we get
orig:	mit-eddie!@MITVMA.MIT.EDU:user@host.BITNET
pass1: switch user and host.bitnet
	mit-eddie!@MITVMA.MIT.EDU!host.BITNET!:user
pass2: switch mit-eddie and the route-addr
	mit-eddie!MITVMA.MIT.EDU!host.BITNET!:user

You see how this *almost* works?  if the colon had been thrown away
it would have worked, instead it gets to host.bitnet, who doesn't have
an user named :user so the bounce message comes back to me.

Anyway, instead of just making *my* sendmail throw away the : in the
route addr when it flips user@host to host!user, I wanted to do
something that would benefit all the hosts down line from me.
In other words, I want to rewrite the From_ line so it doesn't have
route-addrs in them.

I thought about having sendmail throw away the route-addr - it's
just routing information anyway, right?  So I'd have to do something
like
	R$+!@$-:$+	$1!$3
which would turn the above into
	mit-eddie!user@host.bitnet
which I could then correctly turn into
	mit-eddie!host.bitnet!user
but this assumes mit-eddie can get to host.bitnet, an assumption I'm
not prepared to make in the general case.  You couldn't convince me to
do it anyway, because of this header I got yesterday:

mit-eddie!@EDDIE.MIT.EDU,mit-amt!caf.MIT.EDU!mit-eddie!@EDDIE.MIT.EDU:user

I kid you not.  I have no idea what to do with this!  Clearly throwing
away the route-addr is wrong, since it contains the original host
info! (I think! if user is really on mit-eddie, then we're in more
trouble than I want to know about!)

I can't just look for route-addrs and convert them to UUCP-like paths:
	R$+!@$-:$+	$1!$2!$3
because although it would work in the general sense (one host) it would
not work with a route-addr with commas, like
	mit-eddie!@host1.domain,host2.domain:user@host.domain
which would become
	mit-eddie!host1.domain,host2.domain!user@host.domain

OK, so since the standards say only registered hosts can put themselves
in a route-addr (which is probably just wishful thinking, but hey),
maybe I can combine the above rule with another one that strips
everything between a comma and the ! -- so
	mit-eddie!host1.domain,host2.domain!user@host.domain
becomes
	mit-eddie!host1.domain!user@host.domain
which eventually gets rewritten into
	mit-eddie!host1.domain!host.domain!user
which is what I want.

I think.

Any suggestions?  How do I correctly deal with route-addrs in UUCP
paths?  How do others do it?

..Bob
-- 
Bob Page, U of Lowell CS Dept.  page@swan.ulowell.edu  ulowell!page
Have five nice days.