Date: Tue, 1 Sep 1998 09:12:19 -0700 (PDT) From: David Wolfskill <dhw@whistle.com> To: dhw@whistle.com, johnp@lodgenet.com Cc: freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Weird sendmail/pop problem Message-ID: <199809011612.JAA26728@pau-amma.whistle.com> In-Reply-To: <199809010102.UAA22256@milo.lodgenet.com>
next in thread | previous in thread | raw e-mail | index | archive | help
>Date: Mon, 31 Aug 1998 20:02:31 -0500 >From: John Prince <johnp@lodgenet.com> >Not knowing the full situation, only the problem as described, it >appears to me the mail is not created during an alias expansion for >the original sender. >If there is a better way I am "humbly" all ears.. >How would you suggest it be corrected? First, it's not clear that "mail not created during alias expansion" is, in and of itself, a problem. Second, if that *is* perceived to be a problem in a particular set of circumstances, sendmail provides a way to override the default behavior: ensure that the agent that invokes sendmail does so with the "-m" command-line flag. [I'll grant you that this doesn't seem to be documented in the sendmail man page. It's in the source, which is available, and it's alluded to in the man page for "mail". That might be fixed in sendmail 8.9.1; I'm currently running 8.8.8 internally. If it's not fixed in 8.9.1, perhaps someone might want to suggest a patch for the man page to the folks at sendmail.org.] Further, it would appear that the basic issue is that in this case, someone is injecting mail into a system in such a way that sendmail is being told (by the "-f" flag, if I recall correctly) what the sender's identity is. Since the alias expansion includes an address that matches this address (the one specified by "-f"), sendmail is, as usual, suppressing the generation of a likely superfluous copy, as the sender is presumed to be able to make copies, or specifically request (via Cc: or Bcc:, for example) a copy. And in the more general case, it's possible to use a tool such as majordomo, in which case the usual arrangement is that the "sender" name is set to the name of the list (administrator), so all messages to the list would get sent to all members of the list -- even the originator. david -- David Wolfskill UNIX System Administrator dhw@whistle.com voice: (650) 577-7158 pager: (650) 371-4621 To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-hackers" in the body of the message
Want to link to this message? Use this URL: <https://mail-archive.FreeBSD.org/cgi/mid.cgi?199809011612.JAA26728>