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