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Date:      Sun, 17 Sep 1995 03:52:16 +1000 (EST)
From:      michael butler <imb@scgt.oz.au>
To:        pst@shockwave.com (Paul Traina)
Cc:        current@freebsd.org
Subject:   Re: rmail and brain-dead mail systems .. patch enclosed
Message-ID:  <199509161752.DAA14200@asstdc.scgt.oz.au>
In-Reply-To: <199509161739.KAA00498@precipice.shockwave.com> from "Paul Traina" at Sep 16, 95 10:39:05 am

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Paul Traina writes:

> This seems backwards.  Why would you want a null address in there, rather
> than just fix the one or two clients that don't do the right thing if no
> address is present (which has been legal for years)?

The client(s) that don't do the right thing are rmail in combination with
sendmail. The thing generating the "no from address" mail is MS own SMTP
gateway. No way are you going to get them to change that ...

rmail, as it is, instead of forwarding the bounce message generated by
MS-Mail, provokes sendmail into sending *me* the mail (effectively) saying
that it doesn't comprehend it and that a "recipient address must be
specified". 

The resulting command-line is "/usr/sbin/sendmail -f dest_addr".

The angle-bracket form, as produced by the patch, becomes a place-holder to
convince sendmail to do the Right Thing by producing ..

	"/usr/sbin/sendmail -f <> dest_addr".

sendmail then courteously substitutes the string "MAILER-DAEMON" for the
null address and everything works. As I stated, this *is* Eric's "standard"
patch for it .. what other options are there ?

	michael




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