Xref: utzoo news.admin:4259 news.sysadmin:1911 comp.mail.uucp:2506 Path: utzoo!utgpu!watmath!clyde!bellcore!rutgers!mailrus!purdue!decwrl!vixie From: vixie@decwrl.dec.com (Paul A Vixie) Newsgroups: news.admin,news.sysadmin,comp.mail.uucp Subject: Re: Rewriting From: lines Message-ID: Date: 10 Dec 88 07:13:24 GMT References: <1227@vsi1.UUCP> <871@acer.stl.stc.co.uk> <944@dlhpedg.co.uk> <1296@ucsd.EDU> <10510@swan.ulowell.edu> <504@pacbell.PacBell.COM> <1306@ucsd.EDU> Sender: vixie@decwrl.dec.com Organization: DEC Western Research Lab Lines: 31 In-reply-to: brian@ucsd.EDU's message of 9 Dec 88 18:38:32 GMT [Kantor] # Those who say that one should never touch the contents of a From: line # would seem to be those who believe that the From: line always contains # an address. Regrettably, that is not always true, and sometimes # the From: line contains a path, which must, by definition, be updated. I am one who has advocated leaving From: lines alone wherever possible, and I find that I agree with this exception. The sendmail.cf running at UB.COM and FAI.COM will assume that a From: line with only one "host/domain" in it is an address and should be left alone, whereas something with more than one "host/domain" is probably not an address, and is probably either hopelessly screwed up because not everybody has updated it (in which case updating it won't make it worse) or it has been correctly updated so far (in which case updating it will still not make it worse). There are other details involved, but that's the general approach. I havn't heard any complaints so far... The trick is to leave them alone if they don't appear to have been dinked with already. If everybody did that, they would never get dinked with at all. Except when passing through a network gateway, which breaks this whole scheme into a million shards. Hopefully a fully domainized internet will make most of the things we think of as "gateways" disappear either by hiding the whole "other network" in a domain tree ("sxn@ingersoll.sun.com" is on "another network" but I don't have to treat it that way), or by hiding all recipients on the "other network" behind a generic domain name (I'm not really "vixie@decwrl.dec.com" but you don't have to know that). -- Paul Vixie Work: vixie@decwrl.dec.com decwrl!vixie +1 415 853 6600 Play: paul@vixie.sf.ca.us vixie!paul +1 415 864 7013