*BSD News Article 15428


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Newsgroups: comp.os.386bsd.questions
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From: pc123@cus.cam.ac.uk (Pete Chown)
Subject: Re: probs with uucp and sendmail
In-Reply-To: gene@cs.sunysb.edu!stark's message of 30 Apr 93 08:47:46
Message-ID: <PC123.93Apr30195457@bootes.cus.cam.ac.uk>
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References: <1rp74uINNq1h@senator-bedfellow.MIT.EDU> <GENE.93Apr30084746@stark.uucp>
Date: Fri, 30 Apr 1993 18:55:02 GMT
Lines: 41

In article <GENE.93Apr30084746@stark.uucp> gene@cs.sunysb.edu!stark (Gene Stark) writes:

   In article <1rp74uINNq1h@senator-bedfellow.MIT.EDU> dejan@marie.mit.edu (Dejan Vucinic) writes:

   >   I have a standalone machine running 386bsd, and I want 
   >   to uucp to a host.

   >   [ stuff about configuring sendmail for a standalone host ]

   Go to /usr/src/usr.sbin/sendmail/cf and look at what is there.
   There are m4 files and prototypes to create a variety of sendmail.cf files.
   I did this with varying degrees of success.

It was the same with me.  My sendmail.cf file varied between "doesn't
work at all" and "sends out mail but with all the addresses screwy".
It is no accident that the Linux people are distributing smail rather
than sendmail; sendmail has almost always been bad news city in my
experience.

   My main problem is that
   when UUCP mail originating from "user@domain" arrives via host "uulink",
   the reply fields end up containing "uulink!user@domain".  When you
   reply to this, the domain addressing seems to take precedence, resulting
   in an attempt to find user "uulink!user" at "domain".

This, unfortunately, is a conflict between two standards.  Let me
quote from RFC 976:

   However, a hybrid address
   with a ! to the left of an @, such as a!b@c, is ambiguous: it could
   be interpreted as (a!b)@c.d or a!(b@c.d).  Both interpretations can
   be useful.  The first interpretation is required by RFC-822, the
   second is a de-facto standard in the UUCP software.

The solution is to avoid hybrid addresses, but making sendmail change
its behaviour in such a fundamental way is likely to be a bit of
nightmare.
--
---------------------------------------------+ "A tight hat can be stretched.
Pete Chown, pc123@phx.cam.ac.uk (Internet)   |  First damp the head with steam
            pc123@uk.ac.cam.phx (Janet :-)  -+  from a boiling kettle."