Xref: utzoo comp.mail.misc:1104 comp.mail.uucp:1462 comp.mail.sendmail:8 comp.sources.d:2483
Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!munnari!vuwcomp!duncan
From: duncan@comp.vuw.ac.nz (Duncan McEwan)
Newsgroups: comp.mail.misc,comp.mail.uucp,comp.mail.sendmail,comp.sources.d
Subject: Re: routing problem with sendmail/smail
Keywords: mail,smail,sendmail,route
Message-ID: <13955@comp.vuw.ac.nz>
Date: 14 Jul 88 01:19:00 GMT
References: <589@ndcheg.cheg.nd.edu> <426@ncar.ucar.edu> <12545@sunybcs.UUCP>
Reply-To: duncan@comp.vuw.ac.nz (Duncan McEwan)
Organization: Comp Sci, Victoria Univ, Wellington, New Zealand
Lines: 21

In article <12545@sunybcs.UUCP> bowen@sunybcs.UUCP (Devon E Bowen) writes:
>I've got ours set up to bounce everything up to sendmail ...
>... I had to do this because smail didn't update the path as it went
>through us and it made us invisible to mail passing through
>us. Not good when replying.

I believe smail does update the uucp "From_" line and intentionally leaves the
"From: " line untouched.  Having smail pass the message onto sendmail for the
purpose of adding your host to the front of the "From: " line is wrong.  As has
been rehashed in this and other groups many times before, the "From: " line
should be left as a valid rfc822 "user@domain" style address.

Mail user agents that do not understand rfc822 should only look at the "From_"
which smail has updated for you.  Sites whose mailers know about rfc822 can
look at the *domain* address in the "From: " header and figure a route back to
the sender -- they shouldn't need it to contain a valid path.

Apologies if I have misinterpreted what Devon is saying, or if my memory of the
behaviour of smail is incorrect (we no longer use it here so I can't check).

Duncan