From owner-freebsd-questions Tue Jul 28 20:06:58 1998 Return-Path: Received: (from majordom@localhost) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.8/8.8.8) id UAA22097 for freebsd-questions-outgoing; Tue, 28 Jul 1998 20:06:58 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG) Received: from lucy.bedford.net (lucy.bedford.net [206.99.145.54]) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.8/8.8.8) with ESMTP id UAA22055 for ; Tue, 28 Jul 1998 20:06:48 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from listread@lucy.bedford.net) Received: (from listread@localhost) by lucy.bedford.net (8.8.8/8.8.8) id WAA22986; Tue, 28 Jul 1998 22:26:00 -0400 (EDT) (envelope-from listread) Message-Id: <199807290226.WAA22986@lucy.bedford.net> Subject: Re: email question. In-Reply-To: from Stephen Derdau at "Jul 28, 98 12:28:30 pm" To: sderdau@bit-net.com (Stephen Derdau) Date: Tue, 28 Jul 1998 22:26:00 -0400 (EDT) Cc: freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG X-no-archive: yes Reply-to: djv@bedford.net From: CyberPeasant X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4ME+ PL38 (25)] MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG Stephen Derdau wrote: > Why would email sent by a user sderdau%mcl > be delivered and showing from sderdau@mcl instead of > sderdau%mcl@qualified.domain.com. This sounds strange. I can answer the question: "Why would email sent to user sderdau%mcl@q.d.c be sent to sderdau@mcl?" The answer to /that/ question is that the mail system sends to q.d.c; q.d.c looks at the stuff to the left of the @. It substitutes a @ for the right-most % and looks at it again. If there's no @, it's a local user; if there's a @ it sends it off (relays it). This continues until all the %s are eaten. Lots of machines won't do this: it's a form of relaying that spammers have abused. Its legitimate use is to work around problems. Suppose we want to send to A@B. We are at host X. Host B is down or unreachable, has no MX host. But host X is going to go down soon, (It's a laptop? It's running NT? The Feds are at the door?). We know that mail to host C will either get to C or be MX'd somewhere. So we send mail to A%B@C. Getting it to B is now C's problem. > Pointers in the right direction appreciated. > I know this is probably a sendmail question . Just hoping > someone with great expertise wouldn't mind answering it. No great expertise here, but my answer to the question you didn't ask :) is a clue to what's going on, if the question you /did/ ask is the real question. Dave -- Sancho Panza: `Microsoft Windows NT Server is the most secure network operating system available.' Don Quixote: `You are mistaken, Sancho.' To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message