Request for assistance

[jabr at abreau.net (John Abreau)]

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Chris Meyer <cmeyer at MIT.EDU> writes:

> MAIL FROM: <youraddress at somewhere.net>      [From: header, obviously]
> RCPT TO: <youraddress at somewhere.net>      [To: line, obviously; note 
> that you just type the address in both of the above as-is, no brackets 
> or anything]

Those are indeed the correct SMTP commands, but your comments are 
incorrect. This is the SMTP envelope, and it has absolutely nothing 
to do with message headers. The message headers exist at the next 
higher layer in the network stack above the smtp layer. The layers 
are separate for a reason: in networking, "simple and robust" is the 
polar opposite of "complicated and brittle". Mixing the levels by 
turning the envelope addresses into the official header addresses 
would be asking for trouble.

When sendmail accepts a message to deliver (i.e., when it didn't reject 
the message), it will check for a number of required headers and try 
to compensate for any that are missing. If "From" or "To" are missing, 
sendmail will include the envelope addresses as "Apparently-From" and 
"Apparently-To", respectively. The others that come immediately to 
mind are "Message-id" (added if it's missing), "Date" (likewise),
"Sender" (if the envelope mail-from differs from the "From" header), 
and "Received" (always added, to build an audit trail of the delivery 
path).


- --
John Abreau / Executive Director, Boston Linux & Unix
Email jabr at blu.org / WWW http://www.abreau.net / PGP-Key-ID 0xD5C7B5D9
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