HDTenEightyP/NetNews huggingface dataset:
From: Erik Naggum <erik@naggum.no>
Organization: Naggum Software, Oslo, Norway
Date: 23 Jul 1992 23:39:06 +0200
Subject: Re: Is this RFC822 example illegal?

Gary Katch <gpkatch@alcor.concordia.ca> writes:
|
|   Sorry, I an reposting, last message got mangled.
|
|   I was looking at the syntax of In-Reply-To and References in
|   RFC822.  Here are the relevant parts:
|   --------
|        optional-field =
|        [...]
|                    /  "In-Reply-To"       ":"  *(phrase / msg-id)
|                    /  "References"        ":"  *(phrase / msg-id)
|        [...]
|        phrase      =  1*word                       ; Sequence of words
|        word        =  atom / quoted-string
|        quoted-string = <"> *(qtext/quoted-pair) <">; Regular qtext or
|        atom        =  1*<any CHAR except specials, SPACE and CTLs>
|        specials    =  "(" / ")" / "<" / ">" / "@"  ; Must be in quoted-
|                    /  "," / ";" / ":" / "\" / <">  ;  string, to use
|                    /  "." / "[" / "]"              ;  within a word.
|
|        [Example]
|        A.3.3.  About as complex as you're going to get
|        [...]
|        In-Reply-To: <some.string@DBM.Group>, George's message
|   -----------------------------------------^
|
|   Given that only phrases or message-id's can appear in the
|   field-body, and that phrases are made of words and words of atoms,
|   and an atom cannot be a special, then the comma following
|   the address in the example is illegal, right?
|
|   Further, one could put neither addresses nor dates in the field-body
|   unless these strings are quoted  (there is "." and "@" in addresses,
|   and ":" and "," in dates).

Ignore this syntax specification, and treat it as if it said

	*(<any CHAR except "<" and ">" / msg-id)

which is to say that if there are paired delimiters ("<", ">") in there,
they probably delimit a message-id, and hopefully not some other
non-sense.

I have an automatic mail-threader, which attempts to intuit which
message something is a reply to based on several distorted forms of
"user friendliness" in the In-Reply-To field, and I have to add a rule
once a week or so.  Especially people on BITNET, who don't even know
about message ID's to begin with, and people who use ELM, which screws
up the date format, and _lose_ the time zone information.

References is usually uncontaminated by such user friendliness, though,
and the effective specification is a list of message-ids.

Best regards,
</Erik>
--
Erik Naggum             |  ISO  8879 SGML     |
                        |  ISO 10744 HyTime   |
+47-295-0313            |  ISO 10646 UCS      |      Memento, terrigena.
<erik@naggum.no>        |  ISO  9899 C        |      Memento, vita brevis.
Newsgroups: comp.mail.headers
From: gaojeng@durras.anu.edu.au (J. Gao)
Subject: What is this "Comments:" field?
Summary: headers
Keywords: headers
Organization: Computer Services Centre, Australian National University
Date: 28 Jul 92 11:23:16 GMT

The subject says it all. I have had a mesg with this field, which simply
serves the function of Cc; for it says: "To: <a bunch of addresses>"

Can anyone explain this?

J. Gao

Newsgroups: comp.mail.headers,comp.mail.misc,comp.mail.sendmail
From: pen@lysator.liu.se (Peter Eriksson)
Subject: Re: How to prevent the forge mail?
Organization: Lysator Academic Computer Society, Linkoping University, Sweden
Date: Thu, 30 Jul 1992 00:03:44 GMT

morgan@ms.uky.edu (Wes Morgan) writes:

>felix@escape.vsse.in-berlin.de (Felix the double Helix) writes:
>>
>>[deleted]

>Logging the actual transactions, i.e. the actual contents of each message,
>would be both unethical and useless, IMHO.

>HOWEVER.....

>Logging the transaction data (the sender/recipient addresses) can be VERY
>useful.  For instance, I've used that information (extracted from syslog)

To log even more information about who really sent a mail one can use
the RFC931/IDENT/TAP protocol. With this and if the machine the user
is connecting from is running an Ident server it is possible to retreive
the username of who Telnet:ed to your SMTP port and tried to send a
faked email. (Yes yes, it is possible to circumstance this, for example
by using a PC, or by being root on a machine, but most lusers faking
email is probably hiding behind the shelter of a multiuser machine with
many users...)

To add this capability to Sendmail, FTP to ftp.lysator.liu.se, cd to the
directory pub/ident/patches and get the file sendmail-5.65c-IDA1.4.4.1.patch
and apply that to the Sendmail-5.65c-IDA1.4.4.1 sources (the same patch
will probably also work on other versions of the same Sendmail, but one
might have to apply it by hand).

Then it's just a matter of changing the "Received: " format line to
something like:

  HReceived: $?sfrom $s $.by $j $?r with $r$.
             ($v/$Z/Lysator-3.1) id $i; $b $?F
             (rfc931-sender: $F@$S)$.

And all mails received by the Sendmail daemon will contain a line
something like: (rfc931-sender: pen@robin.lysator.liu.se) if
I telnet into it and robin is running a Pidentd server.

And the log lines in the syslog file will look something like:

  Jul 29 06:39:51 lysator sendmail[8796]: AA08796: from=<foo@bar.xy>, size=491, class=0, received from pen@robin.lysator.liu.se (130.236.254.21)

Where the "from=<foo@bar.xy>" is the user supplied sender, which
can be anything and "received from pen@robin.lysator.liu.se (130.236.254.21)"
is the real sender.

Sorry, if all this is old info.

/Peter



--
Peter Eriksson                                              pen@lysator.liu.se
Lysator Academic Computer Society                 ...!uunet!lysator.liu.se!pen
University of Linkoping, Sweden                           I'm bored. Flame me.
From: chr@senga.ka.sub.org (Christian Riede)
Newsgroups: comp.mail.headers
Subject: Re: Return-Path or From: ?
Date: Tue, 28 Jul 1992 20:32:16 GMT
Organization: Private UUCP site
X-Newsreader: Arn V1.00 beta rel1

In article <1992Jul27.024211.20761@ryptyde.cts.com>, Scott McClure writes:

> Which is the correct field for a mailer to use when getting the address
> from a message to reply to it:
> 
> Return-Path:   *or*   From:
> 

First choice (if present): Reply-To:
Second Choice: From:

Return-Path: is for sending error mails by the MTA, not the MUA!

Gruss, Christian

-- 
Christian Riede, Lange Strasse 88, D-W7500 Karlsruhe 51, Germany 
Tel. (+49) 721 {886091 | 608-4487 | 608-2749}  |   iso-8859-1:   
EMail: chr@senga.ka.sub.org, riede@ira.uka.de  |  ==aeoeuess 
Newsgroups: comp.mail.headers
From: gaojeng@durras.anu.edu.au (J. Gao)
Subject: Re: What is this "Comments:" field?
Keywords: headers
Organization: Computer Services Centre, Australian National University
Date: 30 Jul 92 00:49:50 GMT

Here is a sample of the header:


From CHINA-NT@uga.cc.uga.edu Wed Jul 29 08:24:22 1992
Return-Path: <CHINA-NT@uga.cc.uga.edu>
Received: from uga.cc.uga.edu by fac.anu.edu.au (4.1/SMI-4.0)
	id AA26608; Wed, 29 Jul 92 08:23:51 EST
Message-Id: <9207282223.AA26608@fac.anu.edu.au>
Received: from UGA.CC.UGA.EDU by uga.cc.uga.edu (IBM VM SMTP V2R2)
   with BSMTP id 0753; Tue, 28 Jul 92 18:21:32 EDT
Received: from UGA.BITNET by UGA.CC.UGA.EDU (Mailer R2.07) with BSMTP id 7306;
 Tue, 28 Jul 92 18:21:30 EDT
Date:         Tue, 28 Jul 1992 15:21:05 -0700
Reply-To: "Ignatius Ding" <ding@HPSMTC1.CUP.HP.COM>
From: "Ignatius Ding" <ding@HPSMTC1.CUP.HP.COM>
Subject:      Chinese Stamp Said to Show Tiananmen Massacre Date
Comments: To: baggers%law@sun.com, china-nt@uga.cc.uga.edu,
              donovan@csl.sri.com, hknet@cs.wisc.edu, how@iris.ucdavis.edu,
              ifcss%WAM.UMD.EDU@uga.cc.uga.edu,
              joseph_ng%5y@hp0200.desk.hp.com, jung_lin%40@hp1900.desk.hp.COM,
              members%ahkcus.org@diva.Berkeley.EDU, sdc@longhorn.Corp.sun.com,
              Tsui@cisco.COM, ggach@pandora.sf.ca.us, xwu@janus.Berkeley.EDU,
              cnd-editor@djohn-sun.kent.edu, melody@hpsmtc1.cup.hp.com,
              jchu@hpsmtc1.cup.hp.com, wuling@s1.msi.umn.edu,
              li@perry.berkeley.edu, jyee@eclair.berkeley.edu,
              Isaac.Chen@Eng.Sun.COM, ide!ide.com!cai@uunet.UU.NET,
              wwang@mail1.cis.umn.edu
To: Multiple recipients of list CHINA-NT <CHINA-NT@uga.cc.uga.edu>
Status: R

J. Gao
From: erik@naggum.no (Erik Naggum)
Newsgroups: comp.mail.headers
Subject: Re: What is this "Comments:" field?
Date: 28 Jul 92 20:41:27 GMT
Organization: Naggum Software, Oslo, Norway

J. Gao <gaojeng@durras.anu.edu.au> writes:
|
|   The subject says it all. I have had a mesg with this field, which simply
|   serves the function of Cc; for it says: "To: <a bunch of addresses>"
|
|   Can anyone explain this?

Doesn't anybody read RFC's anymore?

For the answer to this, and numerous other questions, consult RFC 822.
Sub-sub-clause 4.7.2, to be exact.  (Not quoted herein, for your long-
term benefit.)  It's highly recommended reading.  For extra background
material, see also RFC 733 and RFC 724, and even trusty, old RFC 561
should be read for the earliest history.

As I was browsing for comments on Comments, I found the reason for the
"," in the In-Reply-To example, too.  Back in RFC 733 days, In-Reply-To
was a comma-separated list.  I occasionally get mail from people whose
mailers use RFC 733 date syntax, and sometimes RFC 733 time syntax.  RFC
733 is not dead, it just expired 10 years ago this October!  BITNET
seems to hold on to it, and to bogus timezones, too.

Curiosity: RFC 733 allowed four-digit years, while RFC 822 did not, and
it had to be reintroduced into RFC 822 in the Host Requirements RFC's
(RFC 1123).

Best regards,
</Erik>
--
Erik Naggum             |  ISO  8879 SGML     |
                        |  ISO 10744 HyTime   |
+47-295-0313            |  ISO 10646 UCS      |      Memento, terrigena.
<erik@naggum.no>        |  ISO  9899 C        |      Memento, vita brevis.
Newsgroups: comp.mail.headers
From: pwl@tc.fluke.COM (Paul Lutt)
Subject: X-FOOBAR: style headers (What are they?)
Organization: John Fluke Mfg. Co., Inc., Everett, WA
Date: Tue, 21 Jul 1992 16:06:03 GMT

While not a newcomer to email or netnews, I'm a bit confused about the
origin and use of email headers of the form:

    X-FOOBAR:

Where FOOBAR may be some commonly used header field, such as
FROM.

I've looked through the RFCs that we have locally and can find no
mention of this practice.  Could some kind soul please enlighten me?
Thanks.
--
	Paul Lutt
Domain:	pwl@tc.fluke.COM
 Voice:	+1 206 356 5059
  UUCP:	uunet!fluke!pwl
 Snail:	John Fluke Mfg. Co. / P.O. Box 9090 / Everett, WA 98206-9090
Newsgroups: comp.mail.headers
From: rickert@mp.cs.niu.edu (Neil Rickert)
Subject: Re: Return-Path or From: ?
Organization: Northern Illinois University
Date: Mon, 27 Jul 1992 15:27:01 GMT

In article <1992Jul27.024211.20761@ryptyde.cts.com> scott@ryptyde.cts.com (Scott McClure) writes:
>
>Which is the correct field for a mailer to use when getting the address
>from a message to reply to it:
>
>Return-Path:   *or*   From:
>
>Seems to me that the Return-Path is often unreliable and should be
>avoided, but there still seem to be sites on the net that use this.

  You are supposed to use "Reply-To:" if there is one, otherwise "From:".
Don't ever use "Return-Path:".  It is highly unreliable.
From: scott@ryptyde.cts.com (Scott McClure)
Newsgroups: comp.mail.headers
Subject: Return-Path or From: ?
Date: 27 Jul 92 02:42:11 GMT
Organization: Ryptyde TimeSharing, San Diego, CA


I have heard conflicting reports on this.  Hopefully someone out there
knows the whole story.

Which is the correct field for a mailer to use when getting the address
from a message to reply to it:

Return-Path:   *or*   From:

Seems to me that the Return-Path is often unreliable and should be
avoided, but there still seem to be sites on the net that use this.

Any information or references (RFC's?) would be appreciated.

Thanks in advance,

Scott

-- 
INTERNET:  scott@ryptyde.cts.com                     | "Nuke the homeless gay
ARPANET:   ryptyde!scott@nosc.mil                    |  baby whales for Jesus!"
UUCP:      {crash, nosc}!ryptyde!scott               |    - bumper sticker
From: kehres@ima.com (Tim Kehres)
Newsgroups: comp.mail.headers
Subject: Re: Return-Path or From: ?
Date: 29 Jul 92 02:38:03 GMT
Organization: International Messaging Associates, Menlo Park, California

In article <1992Jul27.024211.20761@ryptyde.cts.com> scott@ryptyde.cts.com (Scott McClure) writes:

: I have heard conflicting reports on this.  Hopefully someone out there
: knows the whole story.
: 
: Which is the correct field for a mailer to use when getting the address
: from a message to reply to it:
: 
: Return-Path:   *or*   From:

The Return-Path field is to be used by the message transport, in the case
errors are detected in routing.  The From:, and Reply-To: fields are to be
used by user agents in constructing default return addresses.   The Return-Path
field usually reflects the SMTP MAIL FROM value, whereas the From: field is
what the original UA constructs.

Regards,

Tim Kehres
From: gpkatch@alcor.concordia.ca (Gary Katch)
Newsgroups: comp.mail.headers
Subject: Is this RFC822 example illegal?
Date: 23 Jul 92 14:25:53 GMT
Reply-To: Gary Katch <gpkatch@alcor.concordia.ca>
Organization: Concordia University
X-Mailing-Address: Computing Services C-1012
  1455 De Maisonneuve West
  Montreal (Quebec) H3G 1M8
X-Phone-Numbers: voice (514) 848-7632
  fax (514) 848-7622
Originator: gpkatch@alcor

Sorry, I an reposting, last message got mangled.

I was looking at the syntax of In-Reply-To and References in
RFC822.  Here are the relevant parts:
--------
     optional-field =
     [...]
                 /  "In-Reply-To"       ":"  *(phrase / msg-id)
                 /  "References"        ":"  *(phrase / msg-id)
     [...]
     phrase      =  1*word                       ; Sequence of words
     word        =  atom / quoted-string
     quoted-string = <"> *(qtext/quoted-pair) <">; Regular qtext or
     atom        =  1*<any CHAR except specials, SPACE and CTLs>
     specials    =  "(" / ")" / "<" / ">" / "@"  ; Must be in quoted-
                 /  "," / ";" / ":" / "\" / <">  ;  string, to use
                 /  "." / "[" / "]"              ;  within a word.

     [Example]
     A.3.3.  About as complex as you're going to get
     [...]
     In-Reply-To: <some.string@DBM.Group>, George's message
-----------------------------------------^

Given that only phrases or message-id's can appear in the
field-body, and that phrases are made of words and words of atoms,
and an atom cannot be a special, then the comma following
the address in the example is illegal, right?

Further, one could put neither addresses nor dates in the field-body
unless these strings are quoted  (there is "." and "@" in addresses,
and ":" and "," in dates).

-- gk
From: barmar@think.com (Barry Margolin)
Newsgroups: comp.mail.headers
Subject: Re: Is this RFC822 example illegal?
Date: 23 Jul 1992 20:52:28 GMT
Organization: Thinking Machines Corporation, Cambridge MA, USA
NNTP-Posting-Host: telecaster.think.com

In article <4580@daily-planet.concordia.ca> Gary Katch <gpkatch@alcor.concordia.ca> writes:
>                 /  "In-Reply-To"       ":"  *(phrase / msg-id)
...
>     In-Reply-To: <some.string@DBM.Group>, George's message
>
>Given that only phrases or message-id's can appear in the
>field-body, and that phrases are made of words and words of atoms,
>and an atom cannot be a special, then the comma following
>the address in the example is illegal, right?

I think the example is OK.  It's a msg-id followed by a phrase.  The "*"
prefix in the syntax means that there can be any number of phrases and
msg-ids, delimited by commas.

-- 
Barry Margolin
System Manager, Thinking Machines Corp.

barmar@think.com          {uunet,harvard}!think!barmar
From: barrett@daisy.ee.und.ac.za (Alan P Barrett)
Newsgroups: comp.mail.headers
Subject: Re: Is this RFC822 example illegal?
Date: 24 Jul 92 07:00:35 GMT
Article-I.D.: ee.1992Jul24.070035.5051
Organization: Univ. Natal, Durban, S. Africa

barmar@think.com (Barry Margolin) writes:
> I think the example is OK.  It's a msg-id followed by a phrase.  The "*"
> prefix in the syntax means that there can be any number of phrases and
> msg-ids, delimited by commas.

The "*" prefix means any number of items _not_ separated by commas; the
"#" prefix means that they are separated by commas.  The example --

     In-Reply-To: <some.string@DBM.Group>, George's message

in RFC 822 section A.3.3 is inconsistent with the syntax --

                 /  "In-Reply-To"       ":"  *(phrase / msg-id)

in section D.

--apb
Alan Barrett, Dept. of Electronic Eng., Univ. of Natal, Durban, South Africa
RFC822: barrett@ee.und.ac.za             Bang: m2xenix!quagga!undeed!barrett
Newsgroups: comp.mail.headers,comp.mail.misc,comp.mail.sendmail
From: morgan@ms.uky.edu (Wes Morgan)
Subject: Re: How to prevent the forge mail?
    <1992Jul16.163052.17580@cs.n 
    <1992Jul23.014845.804@escape.vsse.in-berlin.de>
Date: Wed, 29 Jul 1992 18:31:53 GMT
Organization: The Puzzle Palace, UKentucky

felix@escape.vsse.in-berlin.de (Felix the double Helix) writes:
>
>well really? do you use a patched smail? i use smail, but as far as i found
>only logs incoming and outgoing mails are logged. i find this absolutely
>ok, but logging *all* telnet's to the smtp port, or even logging all of the
>transactions themselves (well, actually more the latter) i personally find
>unethical. or even another argument against it: what would you want with
>all that rubbish?
>

Logging the actual transactions, i.e. the actual contents of each message,
would be both unethical and useless, IMHO.

HOWEVER.....

Logging the transaction data (the sender/recipient addresses) can be VERY
useful.  For instance, I've used that information (extracted from syslog)
to fine-tune our routing from within sendmail.cf.  If a particular "off
the beaten path" mail route sees extensive use, I'll route it directly
to the gateway machine (rather than route it all through our campus-wide
mail router, which is busy enough as it is).

I could also see where logging all *connections* to SMTP could be handy
in an oft-attacked site.  I've noticed quite a few people downloading the
membership list of my mailing list.

>all of us should know that a mail send to you *could* be forged easily.

Most users do NOT recognize this fact.  I've had several users attain
ballistic trajectory after receiving an obviously forged piece of mail.
I mention the untrustworthiness of email in every lecture I deliver, but
most users seem to forget about it.

>also all of us must know that the mail we send *can* and sometimes even
>*will* be read by others. with this in mind, we can use mail as we wish.

Again, not everyone is aware of this.  You should see the widening eyes
when I give the "email is not necessarily private" portion of my lectures.

>as a postmaster, i often telnet to port 25 of machines too, to find out if
>any obscure errors can be reproduced. i wouldn't want to see who uses me
>system to test a mail connection to me or somewhere else. i couldn't see why
>anyone really finds this interesting, but ah well, if somebody gets a kick
>out of logfiles...

Of course, one may also find people attempting to handfeed mail 
to /bin/sh......8)

--Wes

-- 
MORGAN@UKCC         |       Wes Morgan       |        ...!ukma!ukecc!morgan 
morgan@ms.uky.edu   | Engineering  Computing |   morgan@wuarchive.wustl.edu
morgan@engr.uky.edu | University of Kentucky | JWMorgan@dockmaster.ncsc.mil
  Mailing list for AT&T StarServer S/E  - starserver-request@engr.uky.edu
Newsgroups: comp.mail.headers
From: ckd@eff.org (Christopher Davis)
Subject: Re: X-FOOBAR: style headers (What are they?)
Organization: Electronic Frontier Foundation Tech Central
Date: Tue, 21 Jul 1992 21:09:53 GMT

Paul> == Paul Lutt <pwl@tc.fluke.COM> 

 Paul> While not a newcomer to email or netnews, I'm a bit confused about the
 Paul> origin and use of email headers of the form:

 Paul>     X-FOOBAR:

 Paul> Where FOOBAR may be some commonly used header field, such as
 Paul> FROM.

 Paul> I've looked through the RFCs that we have locally and can find no
 Paul> mention of this practice.  Could some kind soul please enlighten me?
 Paul> Thanks.

RFC822:
     4.7.4.  EXTENSION-FIELD

             A limited number of common fields have  been  defined  in
        this  document.   As  network mail requirements dictate, addi-
        tional fields may be standardized.   To  provide  user-defined
        fields  with  a  measure  of  safety,  in name selection, such
        extension-fields will never have names  that  begin  with  the
        string "X-".

     4.7.5.  USER-DEFINED-FIELD

             Individual users of network mail are free to  define  and
        use  additional  header  fields.   Such fields must have names
        which are not already used in the current specification or  in
        any definitions of extension-fields, and the overall syntax of
        these user-defined-fields must conform to this specification's
        rules   for   delimiting  and  folding  fields.   Due  to  the
        extension-field  publishing  process,  the  name  of  a  user-
        defined-field may be pre-empted

        Note:  The prefatory string "X-" will never  be  used  in  the
               names  of Extension-fields.  This provides user-defined
               fields with a protected set of names.

Basically, that means a simple and guaranteed method of "commenting out"
a header is to add "X-" to the beginning.
--
Christopher Davis * ckd@eff.org * System Administrator, EFF * +1 617 864 0665
   ``The First Amendment is often inconvenient.  But that is besides the
  point.  Inconvenience does not absolve the government of its obligation
         to tolerate speech.'' --Justice Anthony Kennedy, in 91-155
From: lanfranc@bpb.it (Max Lanfranconi - R and D)
Newsgroups: comp.mail.headers
Subject: How can I get bang addresses to become user@foo.bar
Date: 21 Jul 92 15:29:48 GMT
Reply-To: lanfranc@bpb.it

Hi,
	I'm using standard sun sendmail.cf on a network of Sun W.S. running O.S.
4.1.2. I very happy with it but for one thing:

When I send messages I can mail to user@foo.bar, the server knows that it has to be passed to the mailhost machine by smartuucp mailer.
 (I only have internet access by uucp through mailhost)

Why then, when I get incoming messages, they alway come as:

From: mailhost!foo.bar!user . Is there any way to get them as:
From: user@foo.bar  as I would expect (and like to see!).

Any help will be MUCH appreciated as well as pointers to the RTFM :-).

Thanks a lot in advance.

P.S.  Please reply by e-mail *ONLY* as I am not able to read news (yet!) :-{

--Max



*******************************************************************************
*  Massimo Lanfranconi              Internet:  lanfranc@bpb.it                *
*  Organizzazione e S.I.  R & D     UUnet:     ...!uunet!bpb!lanfranc         *
*  Banca Popolare di Bergamo        Telephone: +39 35 392 527                 * 
*  Piazza V. Veneto 8               Fax:       +39 35 392 133                 *
*  I-24100 Bergamo ITALY            Telex:     300410 BPBDIR                  *
*			                                                      *
*         I wish I were what I was when I wished I were what I am.            *
*                          					Anonymous     *
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