[techtalk] Re: mail command

[Lynne Wander]

Hey Cat--

> I'm not sure how many of the lines that follow the first two
>are just a direct result of the initial transformation.  

All the lines that follow the first two are a result of the first
transformation.  

># basic textual canonicalization
>R$*<$*<$*<$+>$*>$*>$*   $4                        3-level <> nesting
>R$*<$*<$+>$*>$*         $3                        2-level <> nesting
>R$*<$+>$*               $2                        basic RFC821/822 parsing
>R$+ at $+               $1@$2                     "at" -> "@" for RFC 822A
>R$*<$*>$*               $1$2$3                    in case recursive

i have to admit, i haven't seen this ruleset before.  was this part of
ruleset 3?  what version of sendmail are you using, and what platform is it
on?   i'm not sure, but this looks like some vendor hack, or else some
really early version.  it's definitely not the open source version, at
least, not any recent one.

>>From this I assume that I need to change something about the line that
>says it will change @ to "at", right?  What does RFC 822A mean, though?

you are exactly right--you do have to change that line--in fact, as far as
i can tell, you don't need that line at all and you can probably comment it
out with no problem.  The only thing that line does is change "at" to
"@"--it doesn't do anything else.   

 RFC822 is the Request For Comments number 822, which is one of the big
RFCs that defines the way e-mail addresses are supposed to look.  But I
don't see anything in there that says you are supposed to change at to @.
you could look at http://www.gssnet.com/rfc/rfc822a.htm for more info.

i am curious about this, though, and i will try to look into it more as
well.  there's probably some history about this that i just don't know
about.  

>Also, I looked in the sendmail.src file, and this same text appears there
>as well.  Which file would I have to change?  

i think i'd need to know what version you were using to be sure, but what
sendmail cares about is the .cf file--i haven't heard heard of an .src
file.   you can probably tell that i really only know about the official
Open Source version, and not any vendor-specific one. i guess you might as
well change the sendmail.src file, if somehow it's being used to generate
the .cf file.  or not--<grin>.

>And after that?

if you comment out that one line in the rule, you would then just have to
kill the sendmail daemon and start it again so that it processes the new
.cf file.

also, depending on what version it turns out to be, you might want to use
the open source version instead...most of what the vendors have done has
made sendmail worse, not better.

> (I bet you're glad you offered to help ;-).  

oh, i am--i might learn something, too, about a vendor version and also
about some RFC history.  

Let me know how it goes...

Lynne


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