On 18 Jul 1996 13:47:41 -0700,
<Michael_Harer(_at_)motorcity2(_dot_)lotus(_dot_)com>
wrote:
Today I isolated an SMTP interoperability problem which was induced by
the fact that V8.6.12 sendmail terminates it's SMTP commands with
linefeed instead of <CR><LF>. Perhaps this is configurable via
sendmail.cf but doesn't the standard clearly state that SMTP commands
are to be terminated by <CR><LF> (mine does)?
This came up recently on the AIMS (Apple Internet Mail Server) list, and
as I recall, the response was that some versions of SendMail come
configured to terminate lines with LF instead of CRLF by default in
order to interoperate with UUCP.
Yes, this does violate SMTP, and many (most?) SMTP servers thus reject
messages from hosts configured this way.
... Should MTA implementations be modified to accept it since there
are many versions of sendmail out there doing this already?
I say NO. Patching conforming implementations to adopt to broken ones
propogates garbage. If MTAs refuse to communicate with hosts running
software that sends LF instead of CRLF, those hosts will get fixed.
--
|Randall Gellens |
randy(_at_)mv(_dot_)unisys(_dot_)com|
|(714) 380-6350 | fax (714)597-8053 can add ,,,,,,,,6350|
|Opinions are personal; facts are suspect; I speak only for myself|