Re: use of 'sendmail -t'

[Simon Josefsson <jas@extundo.com>]

"Greg A. Woods" <woods@weird.com> writes:

> [ On Tuesday, May 6, 2003 at 06:13:50 (-0400), Richard Stallman wrote: ]
>> Subject: Re: use of 'sendmail -t'
>>
>> I believe fencepost is running exim.  Can you tell me how to verify
>> that it is really exim?
>  
> I wasn't able to get Exim to build with just a very quick try in
> NetBSD's pkgsrc, however I was able to find the following paragraph in
> Exim's manual (exim-4.10/doc/spec.txt):
>
>        If there are any "Resent-" headers in the message, an error is
>        generated, and Exim gives up. RFC 2822 talks about different sets of
>        "Resent-" headers (when a message is resent several times), and it is
>        not at all clear how -t should operate in this situation. Experiments
>        with Sendmail have shown that it amalgamates multiple sets of "Resent-"
>        headers when -t is used. This does not seem to be in the spirit of RFC
>        2822.
>
> This does indeed suggest that Exim is one of the few, and maybe only,
> sendmail-compatible mailer which does not support "Resent-*" destination
> headers in combination with use of 'sendmail -t'.

I believe this is a bug in Exim.  I think it is pretty clear from RFC
2822 that the first Resent-* block is the valid one, if any Resent-*
blocks exist at all.  It is unfortunate that a MUST statement wasn't
used when saying that the fields are prepended to the message.  This
was undefined in RFC 822 though.

,----
| 3.6.6. Resent fields
| 
|    Resent fields SHOULD be added to any message that is reintroduced by
|    a user into the transport system.  A separate set of resent fields
|    SHOULD be added each time this is done.  All of the resent fields
|    corresponding to a particular resending of the message SHOULD be
|    together.  Each new set of resent fields is prepended to the message;
|    that is, the most recent set of resent fields appear earlier in the
|    message.  No other fields in the message are changed when resent
|    fields are added.
`----

> In the mean time I will submit a proposal to Philip Hazel suggesting
> that he re-evaluate his position on the support of "Resent-*" headers
> when '-t' is used and hopefully Exim will soon become compatible with
> Sendmail, Smail, Postfix, and other sendmail-compatible mailers.

Ah, we agree.  Good.

Don't forget to ask for the documentation to be updated.  "-t"
currently doesn't mention Resent-* at all, in all manuals I looked in.