At 10:00 AM 6/6/97 -0700, Bill Moseley wrote:
Hello,
I used to filter the procmail list by the header:
Return-Path: <procmail-request(_at_)Informatik(_dot_)RWTH-Aachen(_dot_)DE>
But the last few days I have been receiving some messages that don't have
the Return-Path header. Am I correct that the Return-Path header is placed
on the message by the local mail system?
Correct.
By the look of the headers it seems that Netcom is using different sendmail
versions on different mailhosts.
Could be. There may be lots of reasons for something like that (for example,
to find out whether an upgrade performs better or worse than the pre-upgrade).
[snip]
My question: Is the Return-Path an optional header, and is it something I
shouldn't rely on in my procmail recipes? Is the "From_" header a better
and more reliable choice?
Yes, it's optional. Since it should have exactly the same information as
the "From_" header, I'd use the "From_" pseudo-header.
I suspect that whether or not to add Return-Path is a sendmail configuration
choice in any version, but I don't know for sure. If you use "From_" you
won't care.
Is Netcom really using beta software for its paying customers?
Could be. This is not necessarily bad; the beta might (for example)
contain a fix for something that was causing other problems. Don't forget
that the best, stable version of procmail for 1.5 years was "3.11pre4".
In other words, the label you saw may or may not mean anything.
Cheers,
Stan