🚀 go-pugleaf

karl_kleinpaste@cis.ohio-state.edu writes:
> [2] I see that rewrites of domainisms into !-paths for the benefit of
> UUCP sites are protested.  I disagree with the protest.  I count on
> the following transform always working, for which I have yet to find a
> failure case:

> 	anything@proper.domain.name <=> proper.domain.name!anything

Well, I get shitloads of failure cases here.  If everyone on the Internet
had your sendmail.cf, you're right, nothing would go wrong.  But when you
send out a message with:

	From: proper.domain.name!anything

as it goes through sites with different opinions about sendmail.cf, it will
slowly turn into:

	From: proper.domain.name!anything@relay.site
	From: anything%proper.domain.name@relay.site
	From: relay.site!anything%proper.domain.name
	From: relay.site!anything%proper.domain.name@next.relay

and will become useless.  Even in the cases where it's still usable,
it has become seriously nonoptimal.  (I don't know any other sites besides
yours that are domain-absolutist rerouters, so even good addresses
will pass through several domained sites before being delivered).

> My sendmail.cf is perfectly happy to leave RFC822-compliant headers
> alone.

> However, if I receive mail which shows OWHN!user@F.Q.D.N and I am
> about to route it out of here as UUCP mail, that syntax cannot be
> assured of working, because "dumb" UUCP sites cannot be counted on to
> obey RFC822's requirement of @-over-! precedence.  So I rewrite
> "OWHN!user@F.Q.D.N" as "F.Q.D.N!OWHN!user" in the From: line...

Well, you've contradicted yourself since you've just changed an
RFC822-compliant header into a noncompliant one.

And really, this rewriting does no good, and real harm.  Dumb UUCP sites
don't reply to the From: address, they reply to the From_ address (which
you've set up exactly right).  [I say this after a quick look at the
original SysV.2 mailer.  Does anyone know any dumb mailers that use
From:?]

I don't see why you're trying to protect the dumb sites from seeing
owhn!user@f.q.d.n when you're now giving them an address beginning with
a domain, which they can't handle anyway.

> If everybody left the
> From: line alone, it would be set to whatever the first broken mailer
> set it to, which is frequently incorrect right from the outset.

And if everyone screws with it, it will eventually get broken even if
it was correct from the outset.  I don't see anything wrong with changing
addresses that are already broken (like your user@owhn example), but I
hate seeing people rewrite perfectly good ones.

> Incoming Address	Departing via	Rewrite
> -------- -------	--------- ---	-------
> owhn!user		local or UUCP	don't touch it

Interesting.   You don't even change it to osu-cis!owhn!user?

> owhn!user@f.q.d.n	local or SMTP	don't touch it
> 			UUCP		"From:" -- f.q.d.n!owhn!user

In some ways this is the worst of several worlds.  Dumb UUCP sites (even if
they do use From:) can't use it because it begins with something that isn't
a neighboring UUCP site.  And smart sites, seeing that it isn't RFC822,
will try to "fix" it.

---
Tom Fitzgerald      Wang Labs           fitz@wang.com
1-508-967-5278      Lowell MA, USA      ...!uunet!wang!fitz