Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!uwm.edu!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!brutus.cs.uiuc.edu!jarthur!csvned
From: csvned@jarthur.Claremont.EDU (Ned Freed)
Newsgroups: comp.mail.headers
Subject: Re: Mild flame about (some) UNIX mailers
Message-ID: <4674@jarthur.Claremont.EDU>
Date: 26 Feb 90 11:39:44 GMT
References: <00932CA6.30EE8E00@vms.ecs.rpi.edu>
Organization: Harvey Mudd College, Claremont, CA 91711
Lines: 35

Welcome to the real world of mailers! As the primary author of PMDF, a very
popular mail system for VMS machines, I've run into all the problems you
cite on numerous occasions. You've only just started -- there are lots
more waiting for you.

Now some advice. You'll never get mailers to accept "node::user"@domainhost
format. It is a hopeless task. So I'd recommend using something of the form
user%node@domainhost if possible. This even generalizes to multiple nodes
if you need them. Note that this does not solve the entire problem of
how to handle all the wierd stuff VMS MAIL likes to use, but it will get
you started at least.

The problem of mailers inserting some bogosity into the personal name
field in an address is well-known too. My advice on this one is to simply
ignore it. You should not be looking at header lines for delivery purposes
anyway. The envelope should suffice, and personal name fields are flagrantly
illegal in an envelope (PMDF accepts them but strips them for reasons that
I won't get into in this forum). You can either insert a sanitized header
line in place of the incorrect line or just pass it on unchanged and let
the next mailer downstream worry about it. If it rejects it your hands are
clean -- that's a battle between the offending mailer and the picky mailer!

A final note. All the standards say that a blank address is completely
legal in various places, e.g. an SMTP MAIL FROM: line. Watch out for those.
Several UNIX mailers (you know who you are) go into infinite loops when they
get one of these. And if you think you've had trouble with users whose mail
got lost in the past, you've got a new treat when you deal with a sysmgr
whose load average was at 50 before he wiped out all those looping mail
processes. Not a pretty sight.

Good luck on your project. I saw an announcement of your system on the
JNET-L list, I believe. Sounds good.

				Ned Freed
				ned@ymir.claremont.edu