Re: [Exim] add/remove header

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Author: Philip Hazel
Date:  
To: Hans Matzen
CC: exim-users
Subject: Re: [Exim] add/remove header
On Mon, 25 Oct 1999, Hans Matzen wrote:

> I am afraid but I am not sure if I got what you meant. I have a
> local network which is not permanently connected to the internet.
> every time i connect to the internet i get a new ip-address and a
> new hostname...


Aarrgghh!! What a horrible situation to be in. I am sorry, but I live in
a fully-connected world, and never considered such situations when I was
designing Exim. Using it in these kinds of cases is always going to be
messy because it just isn't built for that sort of situation.

> imagine some users got valid world-usable
> addresses and if they send mail to a mixture of local and remote
> recipients the headers do not fit for local use or remote use.


Do you mean that there are some users who do not have world-usable
addresses? Surely there must be some valid world-usable domain for your
machine? If there is, can't all users just use that domain all the time.
You don't have to make any use of the host name. See qualify_domain.

> as i am informed the from aaa@aaa line is used from
> mta's to send error messages isnt it ?.


No, but it is related. The "from " line in saved messages records the
envelope sender address, which is indeed used by MTAs for errors.
However, it is not transmitted as a "from " line in messages that are
sent by SMTP. The envelope sender is transmitted by the MAIL FROM
command.

> how can i use world usable
> addresses in a domain called e.g. blaaa.fasel.de and ip addresses
> from 10.0.1.0 to 10.0.1.255 ? i do not think, i should call my
> domain a real valid domain-name since i do not own the name and
> the corresponding ip. but as i said i probably did not get your
> suggestion right.


Your mail domain must be a valid one if mail is to get to it from
outside. It doesn't matter what your host name is.

However, I may be misunderstanding what is going on here. How are you
receiving mail? I am assuming it is by SMTP, but if you are downloading
using fetchmail or something like that from a server for some other
domain, then it is a real mess and maybe what I am saying isn't
relevant. As I said, I don't pretend to cater for such situations.

> > > what i want is: rewrite everey local addresses in the header
> > > concerning the originator of the mail
> > > if the mail is remote and dont if its not.


The point is that a single message can be both remote and not remote if
it has several recipients. Therefore, in order to do what you want to
do, you have to split it up into two copies...

> > See FAQ Q1003.


... and the FAQ mentions some ways that you can do this, but Exim isn't
designed with this in mind, so it is a mess.

> i have read the faq before but was not satisfied that such an
> excellent program like exim can not do what sendmail does.


It's no good trying to provoke me by mentioning sendmail. :-) I am not
trying to compete.

-- 
Philip Hazel            University of Cambridge Computing Service,
ph10@???      Cambridge, England. Phone: +44 1223 334714.
Government Policy: If it ain't broke, fix it till it is.