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 Pattermann 
	To: "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?