> On the address-rewriting issues: my memory is that when even when the > address rewriting scheme was first put into place that nobody was really > happy with it. I seem to recall hearing that it was put into place > almost as a kind of hack; the software we were using at the time (was it > sendmail or something?) wasn't flexible enough to do the rewriting rules > well, and the delivery/rewriting rules were so complicated that people > were afraid to mess with them too much.
This is not correct. The address-rewriting system was first put into place deliberately to solve a specific problem. It was at the time that Truman first joined (via MOREnet) the TCP-IP Internet and faculty and staff were first getting PCs on their desks that could run mail client software such as Eudora. Prior to that, all Truman (at that time it was Northeast) email was via an IBM S360 mainframe named ACADEMIC connected to BITNET. My email address when I first came to NMSU was MT59%NEMOMUS.BITNET. That later became [EMAIL PROTECTED] when the mainframe was connected to the TCP-IP network. When we got the router (on the 4Mb token ring network) that was able to bridge our internal PC traffic onto the Internet, we started letting people give out new email addresses in the form of [EMAIL PROTECTED] We set up an IBM RS6000 named noc running AIX to be a sendmail host and contain the campus-wide email alias file. The very first version of the alias file had every single person on campus except me and one student worker having their email forwarded to ACADEMIC, while the two of us got our email on the AIX box. This worked perfectly until the first person wanted to send email out from a PC using Eudora, because the From address looked like [EMAIL PROTECTED] In those days, Eudora could not be set to make the From field be simply [EMAIL PROTECTED] The problem was that no PCs at that time had email server software that allowed incoming SMTP connections, so reply email sent directly to a PC simply bounced. Thus, outgoing email had to be rewritten by the outgoing server to masquerade as nemostate.edu in order to allow people to email from their PCs. People were thrilled with this, as it allowed them to shift from doing mainframe-based email to doing PC-based email. However, by now times have changed just a tiny bit, and: > It would seem to me that, if existing software now permits it, that the > correct rule might that address rewriting should only be done on > "[EMAIL PROTECTED]" if "[EMAIL PROTECTED]" has a meaning. Until this > is fixed, the address rewriting seems to me to remain a bug. I agree with this 100%. -- Jon Beck, PhD mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Assoc Professor, Computer Science 2162 Violette Hall Truman State University 660.785.7233 Kirksville, MO 63501 http://vh216202.truman.edu/ ----------------------------------------------------------------- To get off this list, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with Subject: unsubscribe -----------------------------------------------------------------
