Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10.1 6/24/83 SMI; site sun.uucp Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!burl!ulysses!harpo!decvax!decwrl!sun!gnu From: gnu@sun.uucp (John Gilmore) Newsgroups: net.mail.headers Subject: Re: "From " vs. "From:" in Sendmail Message-ID: <450@sun.uucp> Date: Thu, 23-Feb-84 21:39:17 EST Article-I.D.: sun.450 Posted: Thu Feb 23 21:39:17 1984 Date-Received: Fri, 24-Feb-84 06:55:58 EST References: <5638.31.445827921@ucbarpa> Organization: Sun Microsystems, Inc. Lines: 37 From: eric%ucbarpa@Berkeley.ARPA (Eric Allman) Subject: Re: "Return-Path" vs. "From" Gosh Chris, I'm awfully sorry that I have tried to do the right thing instead of perpetuating the insanity that has characterized (and sadly, continues to characterize) the UNIX mail system. Sendmail passes the information it gets from the received envelope into the transmitted envelope. If the mailer is a program rather than an SMTP channel, the "envelope" consists of the command line arguments. Unfortunately the information provided by uucp in the "envelope" is often wrong. This causes the "From " line and the "From:" line to differ, which is very confusing to the end-users, mail-readers, etc. For mail generated on the Arpanet and relayed to Sun via uucp, the From: line is right (or at least can be munged to be right, by adding ".arpa"), but the "From " line often claims the message is from "daemon" or "uucp" or whatever user happened to do something that started this uucp connection. E.g.: From uucp Thu Feb 23 00:27:47 1984 From: Ed PattermannTo: "sun!gnu@shasta"@SUMEX-AIM.ARPA For mail which has been passed solely thru uucp sites, the "From " line is clearly correct, since the "From:" line has not been maintained at (all) intermediate sites. E.g.: From dual!allegra!cbosgd!fair Thu Feb 23 17:01:34 1984 From: dual!cbosgd!fair The win would have been to make the envelope right for all uucp traffic, (which it already was for strictly-uucp traffic) and have sendmail fix the From: line to match the "From " line. This has not been done -- yet. Is there a uucp/mail expert in the house who can tell us WHY the envelope is "uucp" or some user, instead of the right thing?