On Mon, 17 Jun 91 14:15:04 +0200,
   Eric Thomas <[log in to unmask]> said:
> On Mon, 17 Jun 1991 13:08:38 SDT Klaus Kusche <K312240@AEARN> said:
>
> >The  problem  of  virtual  mail  addresses  (mail  addresses  which  are
> >introduced to  hide the  internals of  some local  network, but  have no
> >physical  existence,  i.e.  mail  addresses which  should  be  used  for
> >receiving mail,  but cannot be used  to send mail or  tell commands) has
> >hit me several times:
>
> This is not LISTSERV's problem. This is a generic problem that will exist
> even with normal mail. If you are  told to put address X on your business
> card, but any mail you send comes  from Y, you have to accept that people
> are going to write to you using the  Y address. They'll pick it up from a
> header, or hit  the REPLY key, etc.  If this address does not  work, I am
> very sorry to say that you have a brain-damaged mail system and you ought
> to put pressure on your local mail people to fix it.
 
Eric is absolutely correct.  (Is this a first?  Me agreeing with
Eric!)  It is quite alright to advertise centralized addresses for
incoming mail, even if outgoing mail does NOT appear to be "From:"
that same centralized address.  However, the address in the "From:"
line *must* be valid to reply to.  I don't feel like reading RFCs
right now, but I suspect that the "From:" address is *required* to be
valid for sending mail to.  (For example, [log in to unmask] works for most
users at USC, but users on workstations send mail from
[log in to unmask], and replies to that address work, and end up in
the central mail system.  I receive mail sent to me at [log in to unmask],
even though I cannot send mail FROM that address.  If I send mail from
an *ix system, it is from [log in to unmask], where xxx is the machine
that I'm logged on to at that time.
 
> >how would you handle this problem in general for big lists???
>
> I would  tell the subscribers  that if they  have no e-mail  address that
> works both ways, they can't join the list.
 
Sounds reasonable to me.  I'd suggest having a canned response ready
that the user can forward to the appropriate mail admin, since most
users won't be able to fix it, and probably won't even understand the
problem.
 
/Leonard