On Fri, 02 Jun 2000 09:59:31 EDT, Jean Bedard <[log in to unmask]>  said:
> Searching through the manuals, and through the archives of LSTSRV-L and LSTOWN-L, I found many references about sendmail not being compatible with probe, but could never find exactly why. Could someone point me to a discussion about it, or tell me:
>
> 1. What exactly probe puts in the header of a mail item,

It creates a special SMTP MAIL FROM:<[log in to unmask]>
type of address.  If mail then bounces, it can parse out the listname, username,
and domain name to determine what address on the list is broken (due to aliases
and forwarding and just plain non-RFC1982 formatte bounces, the actual bounce
may not contain the failing address in it anywhere).

> 2. Why sendmail does not support it,

It can't determine that 'owner-listname-this-that-the-other-thing' is a valid
local mailbox (which isn't surprising, as there's no alias for it, the address
having been built on the fly).

> 3. What exactly will do the patch found in the FTP site of LISTSERV for sendmail 8.10.1.

The patch adds logic to the sendmail 'alias.c' routines to do the following:

a) *if* the address starts with 'owner' and
b) we do *not* have an actual alias/mailbox/whatever for it

then blindly feed it to lsv_amin and let Listserv figure it out.

This patch is *NOT* recommended for general-use machines, as it will feed
owner-* mail to lsv_amin whether the program exists or not.  This is why
this feature isn't in the base Sendmail.

It isn't in Sendmail 8.10.1, and won't be in 8.11 - I'll see if I can code
up a more general solution for 8.12 (which would mean I could get out of the
business of maintaining that patch - I already have enough OTHER sendmail
issues to deal with ;)
--
                                Valdis Kletnieks
                                Operating Systems Analyst
                                Virginia Tech