On Sat, 17 Sep 1994 01:13:08 +0200 Eric Thomas said:
>I don't understand why MH feels it has to do that. There are two options,
Why?  RFC822, section 4.4.2 says so...
 
>from MH's perspective (forgetting LISTSERV for a moment). Either whatever
>processes the mail message ignores the "Sender:" field, and MH wasted its
What is Listserv's rationale for preferring the Sender: over From: in this
case?  I already looked - it's literally a one-line patch to one routine
in MH 6.8 to fix - however, that only affects the systems I control, and
I have administrative control over about 0.5% of the hosts in the vt.edu
domain.  I wanted to understand all the logic involved before I go on a
hunt-and-kill for all the mailers on all the platforms..
 
>time supplying it, or the "Sender:" field  is not ignored and we now have
>a situation where users are tied  to the workstation they actually logged
>in  from, which  is exactly  what  a campus  mail server  is supposed  to
>eliminate.  I  just  don't  see   the  advantage  of  having  a  unified,
>host-independent  campus   address  if   you  then  inject   the  actual,
>host-dependent  address in  a field  that  will be  used by  a number  of
>automated mail responders.
My reading of RFC822 indicates that From: is intended to be the "logical
origin", and Sender: identifies something acting on the From:'s behalf.
As such, MH is merely identifying which entity posted the message, not
all that far removed from a Received: tag in tracing/auditing.
(The actual RFC822 text talks in terms of the 'office memo' model, and
equates From: with the manager who ordered the memo, and Sender: with the
secretary who actually typed and distributed it - with no doubt that it's
the *boss*'s mail, not the secretary's...)
 
I know that a large part of this is probably due to the unfortunate
overloading rfc822 placed on Sender: as both the target of bounce mail
and as the actual sending entity.  I'm trying to get a grip on exactly what
the Listserv model for From: and Sender: is before I change things to suit.
If I understood *why* Listserv was taking the Sender: in preference to the
From:, sans any indication that it might be a mailer daemon or error mail,
I'd have an easier time getting this all to work...
 
/Valdis