Sendmail "rewrite: expansion too long" error?

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2 total messages Started by Manavendra K. Thakur Thu, 08 Dec 1988 15:36

#3012

Author: Manavendra K. Thakur
Date: Thu, 08 Dec 1988 15:36

44 lines
1954 bytes


Hi folks,

I'm having problems with sendmail on a Sun 3/280 running SunOS 3.5.1.
The version number of sendmail is given as 3.2/4.30.  (Does the 3.2
refer to SunOS 3.2 ?)

Anyway, what happens is that occasionally sendmail will get into this
funny state where it starts to reject valid mail addresses.  It gives
errors like this one:

<<< HELO cfa213.HARVARD.EDU
<<< MAIL From:<maria@cfa213>
554 rewrite: expansion too long
554 rewrite: expansion too long
554 rewrite: expansion too long
554 rewrite: expansion too long
554 rewrite: expansion too long
554 rewrite: expansion too long
554 rewrite: expansion too long
554 rewrite: expansion too long
<<< QUIT


I can't imagine why sendmail can't parse <maria@cfa213>, which is a
perfectly valid address on our system.  I tried feeding this address
through Ruleset 0 (after running sendmail in test mode), and it *was*
able to parse it correctly.

The only way I've found to fix this is to kill the sendmail daemon and
restart it.  Then the problem goes away.

This only happens, by the way, on our Sun 3/280, and it happened under
SunOS 3.4 also.

Does anyone have a clue as to what causes sendmail to go into this
funny mode?  It's hard for me to track what's going on, because we're
a binary site.  Any help, comments, suggestions, or pointers on where
to look next will be appreciated.
-- 
                                Manavendra K. Thakur
                                thakur@cfa200.harvard.edu
                                thakur%cfa@harvard.harvard.edu

Re: Sendmail "rewrite: expansion too long" error?

#3014

Author: Ed Clarke
Date: Sun, 11 Dec 1988 14:08

25 lines
1326 bytes

From article <1185@cfa204.cfa250.harvard.edu>, by thakur@cfa250.harvard.edu (Manavendra K. Thakur):
- Anyway, what happens is that occasionally sendmail will get into this
- funny state where it starts to reject valid mail addresses.  It gives
- errors like this one:
-    <<< HELO cfa213.HARVARD.EDU
-    <<< MAIL From:<maria@cfa213>
-    554 rewrite: expansion too long
- I can't imagine why sendmail can't parse <maria@cfa213>, which is a
- perfectly valid address on our system.  I tried feeding this address

I get the same thing - using sendmail 5.59 from Berkeley with the
IDA sendmail patches from arisia.  What's really awful is that it
doesn't happen all the time.  I can send myself mail from another
machine and 7 out of 8 times it works perfectly.  The eighth time
it blows up as above.

It looks like it keeps tacking on the domain (where xxx.com is the 
domain):

clarke.xxx.com.xxx.com.xxx.com .....

Oh well, at least I'm not alone ... 8-(
-- 
Ed Clarke
uunet!bywater!acheron!clarke

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