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Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!burl!ulysses!harpo!decvax!mcvax!enea!erix!per
From: per@erix.UUCP (Per Hedeland)
Newsgroups: net.mail
Subject: Re: mailers munging return addresses
Message-ID: <279@erix.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 22-Feb-84 10:40:58 EST
Article-I.D.: erix.279
Posted: Wed Feb 22 10:40:58 1984
Date-Received: Fri, 24-Feb-84 02:45:58 EST
References: <655@nsc.UUCP> <2559@fortune.UUCP>
Organization: L M Ericsson, Stockholm, Sweden
Lines: 41

<>

While RFC 886 is interesting (imagine, a standard for munging!), it doesn't
seem to give much help in the current situation.

I don't think the problem with the 'From:' lines is the fault of 4.2 sendmail,
but rather of the sites *not* running it, which don't understand the RFC 822
standard (or shouldn't we adopt it? hmmm...)

As you have noticed, these sites don't prepend their name to the contents of
the 'From:' line, rather they prepend the 'From ... remote from "site"' line
to the message, hopefully making at least the 'From ' line(s) in the message
you receive correct. (But be warned: sendmail, and 4.2 rmail, munges this line
too, so there are no guarantees...)

Granted that this situation will exist for a while, the real problem is:
Which line ('From:' or 'From ') does your mailer use for a reply? If your mail
system doesn't understand the 'From:' line, it certainly shouldn't use it for
replies! (E g 4.1 Mail uses 'From ', 4.2 Mail uses 'From:'.)

That leaves us poor 4.2 users (and others?) whose replies keep bouncing...
I can see two (maybe three) possible solutions:
1) Edit the message (e g deleting or distorting the 'From:' line) before
   replying. (Ugly, quite impossible to present to the user community.)
2) Use the wonderful flexibility of sendmail, modifying the .cf file to
   make it, at local delivery,
   a) Drop the 'From:' line completely or
   b) Turn it into something unrecognizeable ('Apparently-From:' ?).

The solutions in 2) both have the drawback that this modifification must be
reverted at some future time (when?), and that they may have unwanted side-
effects (which?). (Not mentioning that tampering with the .cf file always
gives me the creeps - I'm not even 100% sure that these modifications are
possible!)

Comments, anyone?

Per Hedeland
..{decvax, philabs}!mcvax!enea!erix!per  or  per@erix.UUCP

PS. Of course this problem will go away when we all use domain addressing! :-)