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- Newsgroups: comp.protocols.iso.x400
- Path: sparky!uunet!mcsun!sunic!ugle.unit.no!boheme.er.sintef.no!hta
- From: hta@boheme.er.sintef.no (Harald Tveit Alvestrand)
- Subject: Why Sendmail fails /.../@gateway addresses
- Message-ID: <1992Sep15.084131.20012@ugle.unit.no>
- Sender: news@ugle.unit.no (NetNews Administrator)
- Reply-To: harald.alvestrand@delab.sintef.no
- Organization: SINTEF DELAB, Norway
- Date: Tue, 15 Sep 92 08:41:31 GMT
- Lines: 47
-
- Another FAQ piece - I feel that something is missing.
- Can anyone help me out?
-
- harald A
-
- 10) Why does mail to /..../@gateway fail?
-
- This is a bug of long standing.
-
- Typically, you see a message like:
-
- << /...../@gateway: Cannot mail directly to files
-
- This has a long and convoluted history.
- Usually, it involves a mailer that knows how to do UUCP.
-
- It turns out that one program used in UUCP (uuxqt) is capable of
- executing a large set of commands, some of which may destroy important
- files if given filename arguments.
-
- So, in order to protect this from happening, HDB UUCP will follow in
- the tradition of fixing loose thumbtacks with sledgehammers, and
- refuse to accept any command that has an argument that looks like a
- filename that is relative to the root.
-
- In the common UUCP setup, where only rmail and rnews are permitted,
- this does not make sense, but it is not possible to turn it off.
-
- In Taylor UUCP, it is a compile time option.
- (This information supplied by Ian Lance Taylor <ian@airs.com>)
-
- Another "nice" feature that helps in causing this is the "s" flag in
- the Sendmail mailer definition. This strips the quotes off the local
- part of the address, so that "/..../"@gateway gets turned into
- /..../@gateway, which easily makes things go haywire.
- This flag should be nuked on all mailers except the "local" and "prog"
- mailers. Unfortunately, SUN ships it on all mailers by default, but then,
- anyone who uses a SUN default Sendmail configuration has problems anyway.
-
-
-
-
- --
- Harald Tveit Alvestrand
- Harald.Alvestrand@delab.sintef.no
- C=no;PRMD=uninett;O=sintef;OU=delab;S=alvestrand;G=harald
- +47 7 59 70 94
-