Jason R Mastaler <jason(_at_)4b(_dot_)org> writes:
Dan Harkless <dharkless(_at_)unitech(_dot_)com> writes:
Giles Lean <giles_lean(_at_)aus(_dot_)hp(_dot_)com> writes:
mts.conf provides for 'localname' to override the hostname. Very handy
for masquerading.
I've just met a site whose their Openmail hub doesn't understand the
local Unix login names, so it is necessary to masquerade the username as
well.
I have done this by patching zotnet/mts/mts.c (diff below). I think the
environment variable name is probably inappropriate.
Wonderful!!! Thanks so much for this, Giles. I had been meaning to figure
out how to patch the code to do this for some time.
I send from an account on my local machine called dlh, and I masquerade as
unitech.com, so the envelope From comes out as dlh(_at_)unitech(_dot_)com,
but that
account doesn't exist. Certain programs (such as the Mailman mailing list
administrator) incorrectly use the envelope From in preference to From or
Reply-To fields in the mail itself, so I end up silently losing mail.
You shouldn't have to lose mail over something like this.
I agree. It's really the fault of the programs receiving the mail, but
since I can't fix all of those, I'd like my MUA to be fixed, especially
since it's easy to do so.
FWIW, qmail allows the user to override the default envelope sender
address by simply setting an environment variable.
I'm aware that qmail has lots of advantages of this sort, but when I tried
to install it on my HP-UX 10.20 machine, it was a disaster. I read all the
installation documentation carefully and thoroughly before doing anything,
but no matter how hard I tried, I couldn't get it to work properly. It
didn't output messages to the syslog like it was supposed to, mail silently
failed to go anywhere, etc.
It also apparently has no feature like 'sendmail -v' (certainly its
emulation of the sendmail program ignores the -v). This is a show-stopper.
I will not use an MTA that doesn't let me watch the SMTP transaction.
No patching of nmh is required, and it will work no matter which MUA you
use.
nmh is the only MUA I use on UNIX, so this doesn't matter to me. Besides,
not every nmh user has the option to change out their system's MTA just to
get envelope From user masquerading.
--
Dan Harkless
dharkless(_at_)unitech(_dot_)com
Unitech Research, Inc.