On Mon, 12 Jul 1993 14:46:20 EDT, Anthea Tillyer <[log in to unmask]> said:
[non-fully-qualified hostname appearing on BITNET]
 
>Can anyone tell me a good (simple) way to deal with this...I mean a way that
>is more productive than simply deleting this individual or setting him to
>nomail?
 
That's the way.
 
>Also, how could this happen? How can a person sign on at a node that does not
>exist?
 
Typically, it's because some bonehead system manager misconfigures his
mail software so that From: fields are sent out without fully-qualified host
names.  There's nothing you can do.
 
If you can come up with a guess for a hostname (and that hostname has
an IP address), then you can telnet to the smtp port and use the VRFY
command to see if the userid is valid on that host.  That won't
necessarily be an authoritative answer, but sometimes it can give you
a clue.  For example, there is a wuecona.wustl.edu.  It's almost
certainly not the only one, and I'm pretty sure that it
fully-qualifies its mail, but you could telnet to it and check the
userid from your subscription.
 
In general, though, that's a whole lot of work for ***VERY*** little
pay-off.  The novelty wears off real fast, and then you just set them
to nomail at the first hint of trouble.
 
Bill
>Peace,
>Anthea Tillyer               City University of New York     ABTHC@CUNYVM